Forever and a Day
Posted by Graham/Brian EV on Wednesday, September 11, 2013
It certainly feels that long since my previous entry... A lot has been happening at Singular Motion, and we're gearing up again for EVFest 2013.
The most obvious upgrade we've made to the 944 is it's new paint job by Rubberized Rides in Orangeville. Curtis did a great job making our beast Firebelly Orange. You won't miss it at EV Fest, that's for sure.
We will also be adding an additional 12 cells to our battery pack over the next week or so. All of our components are rated for at least 350VDC, so we will be slowly adding on until we are getting the performance and range that we want.
We finally got around to performing a range test, and found that our pack will only take us a woeful 52km (at 80%DOD) of hilly driving at 80kmph or so. That works out to roughly one km per cell. There are a number of causes for this that we will be exploring:
- Alignment: this hasn't been done since we started the project. Very likely we will add some efficiency by getting the tires properly aligned for the new weight distribution.
- Transmission: The stock transmission that we have is now the noisiest part of the drivetrain. There are sure to be a lot of losses accumulated over years of driving. We are exploring a replacement/upgrade.
- Aerodynamics: the 944 is not the sleekest of cars. The underside of the car has more air pockets where components used to be, that could be adding to the drag. We will explore how to smooth out the air flow under the car.
Well, that's a brief update - come to EV Fest on September 22, 2013 to see the 944 for yourself!
The most obvious upgrade we've made to the 944 is it's new paint job by Rubberized Rides in Orangeville. Curtis did a great job making our beast Firebelly Orange. You won't miss it at EV Fest, that's for sure.
We will also be adding an additional 12 cells to our battery pack over the next week or so. All of our components are rated for at least 350VDC, so we will be slowly adding on until we are getting the performance and range that we want.
We finally got around to performing a range test, and found that our pack will only take us a woeful 52km (at 80%DOD) of hilly driving at 80kmph or so. That works out to roughly one km per cell. There are a number of causes for this that we will be exploring:
- Alignment: this hasn't been done since we started the project. Very likely we will add some efficiency by getting the tires properly aligned for the new weight distribution.
- Transmission: The stock transmission that we have is now the noisiest part of the drivetrain. There are sure to be a lot of losses accumulated over years of driving. We are exploring a replacement/upgrade.
- Aerodynamics: the 944 is not the sleekest of cars. The underside of the car has more air pockets where components used to be, that could be adding to the drag. We will explore how to smooth out the air flow under the car.
Well, that's a brief update - come to EV Fest on September 22, 2013 to see the 944 for yourself!