Re: Home made Hybrid

["Jim Blair" <carnuck@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A: The other alternative is buying a parts rig that is already electric 
powered and swapping the parts to your rig. That's my plan. There is a sale 
coming up next summer of ex-gov vehicles and sometimes they pop up.


From: m k <socalramblers@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Home made Hybrid
To: mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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Why not buy a used electric car?  There was even a Concord wagon on ebay 
that went for $2500 or so with not even a thousand miles.  I came across a 
Renault (boo boo, hiss hiss) Le Car in Ohio that sold for about $300 bucks 
and needed batteries.  I'm in California so with the transportation cost 
several times the cost of the car, I had to pass.  You will never recover 
your time from such a conversion if you do it yourself.  To do it right with 
new parts, you're looking at $5000 plus the cost of the car.  Get a used 
motor and motor controller and you may get that down to $3000.

I used to work on electric cars back in junior college and we built a couple 
of electric go karts.  One car that was donated to the college was a '73 
Mazda RX3 with the old RWD axle from the rotary drivetrain.  The mismatch in 
the gearing between a 7000 RPM engine and a 2000 RPM electric motor gave us 
a top speed of no higher than 35.

I've seen two types of homebuilt hybrids.  One uses a full set of batteries 
and a generator on a trailer, which charges the batteries while being 
driven.  The down side is that lead acid batteries can't be quick charged 
too often without the loss of capacity so your batteries will need to be 
replaced sooner than a straight electric.  The other is more complicated and 
more expensive, to have the generator provide electricity directly to the 
motor while pulling amps from a smaller pack of batteries for acceleration. 
Either of these hybrids can get about 100 MPG and I've heard of over 300 
miles on a charge.

The Prius and Civic hybrids use the batteries for acceleration and the 
engine at cruising speed.  The engine directly powers the car, but also 
provides electricity to the batteries so they never need recharging.

Now how much time does it take to recover the cost of a conversion through 
saving on gasoline?  There's also no need for oil changes, smog, engine 
electronics, tune ups.  So there is a point where most people would save, 
but it would take years.  Buy one used and you'd probably start saving 
during the first year.


Michael Kelly