No pistons, no fuel, no worries! Toyota Sera EV Conversion begins…

[VA61DETT]

Hi all,

Well I have had ideas about converting an old car to leccy power for about a year now.
After much procrastination I have finally got my ass into gear.

The aim of the project was to build a totally functional and practical daily driver, which could get 2 people about 150Km per charge, still maintain all of the vehicle functionality & driveability.

First off there was a lot of research done into battery / motor technologies & getting an idea of how much power would be required to get from A – B (including hills) etc…
The only suitable battery technology was Lithium Ion, giving great range and very good power density / weight figures.
Ideally this would have been coupled to a 3phase induction or permanent magnet motor, but the cost was just too hard to justify.
I ended up settling for DC technology, cheep, simple, readily available and still around 80% efficient.

Next was the all important car selection, something cheep, light, not too old & most importantly interesting!
There was no way I was going to spend mega $$$ and time on a boring 90’s excel or lancer…

After much hunting around I came across the Sera, 90’s. + Light weight + Different + Toyota = winner!

[The Sera @ Home]


[What doors ?!?]


[The hectic 5E-FHE]



Now that we had the car & an idea of the requirements I got onto the various local and international EV companies to source the specific components to suite.

Motor
Netgain Impulse9 (Rated about 40Kw @ 144v)

[The 9” beast]


Batteries
Thundersky LiOn 160Ah (45 units) 162V nominal

[Big, yellow and bloody expensive!]


DC Controller
Zilla 1K, 1000A @ ~180VDC (That’s 180Kw capacity!
[The Zilla!]


There is also an assortment of bits n pieces for charging, battery monitoring brakes, heater etc…

[misc bits]


Now onto the hard stuff….

Planning to have the engine out this weekend & to start work on designing the DC motor adapter plate, already have a nice ¾ inch thick block of ally sitting around for the job.

I am planning to keep the clutch system for now, as this will give me the ability to use the engine to idle the accessories, such as power steering & A/C.
Eventually I would like to get a second accessory motor to take care of this, but for now there is a lot of work to be done….

[oldcorollas]

is it going to have braking regen capacity? how hard is that to implement?

[MR22ZZ]

wow, interesting project.

Will watch this one with great interest.
Good Luck

[Brendan]

Definately a cool project.

Not many of us are that quick to jump into new technology.

Very keen to see how this turns out

[tomvale13]

Hey mate,

I read through an article about a guy who's done this with an ep91, I am unsure if he had regeneration through mechanisms in his brakes but he had it running!

good luck!

[wagonist]

Going to be an interested project.

Confused how you ended up with light weight and Sera in the same sentence though.
The strengthening to the shell to accomodate those gull wing doors equates to about 200kg extra over an equivalent Paseo.

The Starlet would've been a better starting point.

You planning on keeping the A/C for the glasshouse to stay cool?

Each to their own I suppose.

[RyleyMA61]

If you need help the Elec. Engineer and co at uni have done all this to a few Hyundai Getz that are zippin round Melbourne now... So i can ask for you.

Looks the goods though!

[JustCallMeOrlando]

Ditto, if you need some advice, one of my bosses is involved with this here in Perth:
http://www.therevproject.com/

[IN 05 NT]

hey check this lil beast out!!! 11 second electric datto.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cf89tawZX8

[godlovesugly]

if beyond2000 taught me anything its that all electric cars will have gullwing doors so i understand the choice.

although an ultra light old school corolla would have been my choice.

[RA35GT]

I was wondering when/if you were going to start a thread on this Aaron.

I'm definately interested in how it all works!

[oldcorollas]

Confused how you ended up with light weight and Sera in the same sentence though.
The strengthening to the shell to accomodate those gull wing doors equates to about 200kg extra over an equivalent Paseo.

The Starlet would've been a better starting point.
Each to their own I suppose.

maybe you missed reading this bit

Next was the all important car selection, something cheep, light, not too old & most importantly interesting!
There was no way I was going to spend mega $$$ and time on a boring 90’s excel or lancer…

After much hunting around I came across the Sera, 90’s. + Light weight + Different + Toyota = winner!

paseo is boring
starlet is boring

according to the all-knowing Wiki..
Sera is 930kg
paseo is 975kg...

care to back up your 200kg claim?

here has 1992 Paseo at 940kg, and 1990 Sera at 900kg
http://www.carfolio.com/specificatio...car/?car=16379
http://www.carfolio.com/specificatio...car/?car=15730

[jono]

awesome. i've already said my next engine conversion will be an electric motor, so i'll be watching this one closely.

[Talasas]

Glad to see you finally got it started. You already picked up some nice bits there, particularly the batteries and the DC controller. I'll be watching this with great interest. I toyed with the idea myself for a while but I couldn't justify the cost either, it looks like you spent some big bucks already

Should be great though, and if you want a real challenge keep the air con functional as well

[jimmmayyy]

any possibility of tellin us the costs?

[VA61DETT]

Hey all,

Wow, big response!
Cheers for all the input!

Currently no plans for regen, going to just get it up and running, see how battery life goes.
From talking to a few ppl, the regen controllers and the added cost / complexity make it hard to justify the gains.

Yep, Aircon is a must on this one!
Will just drive it from the main motor for the time being.

Costs, freekn huge, I dont really want to think about it now :|

[Billzilla]

FWIW you can get electric air-con compressors - They don't use the engine drive at all.
I'm pretty sure the Mk2 Prius onwards uses them.
Also ->



http://www.masterflux.com/products/s...rigerant=R134a

[wagonist]

maybe you missed reading this bit


paseo is boring
starlet is boring

according to the all-knowing Wiki..
Sera is 930kg
paseo is 975kg...

care to back up your 200kg claim?

here has 1992 Paseo at 940kg, and 1990 Sera at 900kg
http://www.carfolio.com/specificatio...car/?car=16379
http://www.carfolio.com/specificatio...car/?car=15730

oops got mixed up.
I meant Starlet wieght at 850kg odd.
I'm surprised at that weight of the Sera though. Is that dry weight?

EP81 Starlet would be interesting (for here where they weren't sold new).
But anyway, the car has been bought already.

Better than the Electric Rodeo (we think according to the stickers on it anyway, it was going so slow on the M4 that it was a joke) where they'd gotten a last model Magna sedan body & fitted that on instead of the tray

[CHB]

wondering something, once u run dry on your estimated 150km, how long to do you need to recharge the battery for another 150km?

[Kristel]

This is awesome!

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