EV ( Electric Vehicle ) Conversion 7-01-2007

"If I'm extremely lucky..."
if we are talking about the good kind of lucky, not so much.

Both Belktronix and PakTrakr met their respective deadlines of getting me all the electronical doo-dads in time so that if the next piece of news hadn't happened I may have pulled it off (finishing a running EV in time for the EVAoSD meeting 6-26-2007).

PowerSonic raised their battery prices 30% from one day to the next without warning. They may have warned their distributors, but not me. What that means to me is ...more saving pennies...

It also means I can take my time in finishing Phase 1 (getting the damn thing running). Because of the Escondido heat in in June and July I've been slacking in my Monster Garage impersonations. That doesn't mean I haven't been doing stuff...

The slideshow is of a GUI(graphic user interface) front-end program called RoadRunner for use in a Car-PC the "skin" (3rd party customization) is called DigitalFX2.

The PakTrakr's ability to send once a second bursts of information such as:

• Pack state of charge
• Individual battery voltages
• 30-day logged data
• Amps/Watts
• Battery bay temperature
  as well as Alerts for
• Failing Battery
• Pack Imbalance
• Damaged Battery
• Low State of Charge
• Overcharging

via a serial connection to a PC (or smart device with a serial connection)of your choosing, got me into looking at CarPCs. Especially the following combination:

Of course this may be a bit too much on the car's battery, so I figure just the touchscreen and some kind of small portable battery powered PC to connect to it that I can recharge at home or the office.
Doug, who electrified his Ghia has already done something like this and writes about it in his own blog, er Bloghia .