Quote:
Originally Posted by sclitheroe
That's about 30 horsepower sustained for one hour. You need more power for cruising, less for travel at sustained speed. I have no idea how much horsepower you need to sustain say 50-60 km/h, but a horsepower is about 740 watts. If it takes you 15 horsepower to sustain that speed, that's only 2 hours to total discharge, and you still haven't taken into account the extra power needed for acceleration. Knock another 20% off that, because you don't want to discharge below 20% or so to avoid damaging the batteries, and you are looking at a vehicle with pathetic range.
The Tesla Roadster has 53 kilowatt hours of battery capacity, using lithium batteries for a significant weight savings compared to your proposed batteries, which are heavier and are only going to provide 23 kilowatt hours of energy.
It's going to look hilarious when you blow 20% of your capacity climbing Nose Hill, or make it to Airdrie before parking for 24+ hours to recharge.
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AGM cells can safely go below 20% discharge.
Lithium would be a good idea except it would be prohibitively expensive for a hobby project.
This was all inspired by an episode of Orange County Choppers or whatever where they took the engine out of a Honda Goldwing and then used a 60V DC motor with 5 batteries and that thing went like a bat out of hell. So I was thinking simply getting a bigger DC motor and more power.
Oh god I have such a hangover....
