Otmar's new EV project.
This is California Poppy, my latest Electric Vehicle
Latest News:I'm saddened to report that the California Poppy no longer holds the NEDRA SC/B record, it seems that on 5.8.04 John Wayland took that away with a 13.004 time in his Exide Orbital powered Datsun 1200. At the same time he busted the 100 mph barrier for a street legal EV in the 1/4 mile too. That's excellent! I'm glad to see people pushing the limits and proud to see that they are running my controllers while doing it.
I still have a lot of fun with this car. On January 24th of 2004 I had it at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The best time it did for the 1/4 mile drag race that day was a 13.810 seconds at 98.38 mph. On another run Brian Hall managed 99.4 mph, just 0.6 mph short of the elusive 100 mph barrier! In the mean time, I enjoyed walking away from a 400 ci GTO at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, CA.
Older update: The 930 Turbo transaxle with a limited slip differential is installed. I've reversed the motors and am running the input shaft backwards to avoid having to flip the ring gear in it. The 930 should handle 600 ft/lb. with no trouble. (It actually seem to to be handling 1000 ft'lb of torque pretty well, no broken gears yet!) I leave it in 3rd, this enables me to spin the tires off the line at about 1700 amps if I want and still do a bit over 100 mph before hitting motor redline.
This is the Zilla controller, I needed a new EV to be able to test it.
Here it is in the car. Click for larger picture
Click for Cafe Electric Home Page.
When it was time to build another EV, primarily I needed one that I could use to test my Zilla motor controllers. I also decided I wanted one that was topless, fun, fast and could go a long way on a charge (OK, so maybe I didn't get that). I was satisfied with a two seater and so the choice became pretty simple. For these requirements, the Porsche 914 is the best fit that I know of. I owned a 914 for about 5 years back in High School. I loved it. Now I have one that is even better, It's Electric!
Parts used:
Two standard 8" Advanced DC motors, belted together.
Goodyear belts and pulleys. Sprockets B-30S-SK, Belt B-994. Best price from phoenix@bdi-usa.com
One Zilla motor controller.
20 to 29 Exide Orbital Batteries.
EcoContact EP 175/55 R15 Tires.
Manzanita Micro PFC -30 battery charger.
Vicor DC to DCs.
Wayland Stereo (tm), Eclipse 54110 Head unit, 3640 Amp, Eclipse Speakers etc.
Target Performance:
0-60 in under 5 seconds.
Top speed over 140 mph.
Range per charge at 65 mph: 55 miles. (that didn't happen, it's closer to 30 miles due to all the race "improvements")
My original range target was for over 100 miles of range. I then did the numbers on the Saft Ni-Cad batteries and found out that in exchange for the 100+ mile range, I could only get 100 HP from them. So for now I've decided to switch to lead batteries in order to maintain the high power and acceleration at the expense of range. I guess I'll just have to stick to local girlfriends.
Hits since 1.27.03Last update 5.9.04
