This page will document the conversion of a Honda Accord from having a ICE powerplant to having a electric motor as the main drive source. It will mostly focus on the electronics issues involved, although it may occasionally meander into the mechanical, especially for particularly tricky issues

This page does not actually reflect the current state of the car. I've gotten behind horribly in the documenting. Currently the car is having new springs installed and being beefed up so that it is equipped to tow a generator. It is operable, seats four, takes 5 hours to charge, goes 100 miles on a charge, has a top speed in excess of 100 mph - and handles like a cow. Hopefully changing the springs and suspension will fix that.

My hope is to, through microcontroller based battery management that you can read about at evtech and on the associated mailing list, produce the ultimate battery management system. Since the batteries are the bane of any EV, this seems to be a neccesary step.

Anyway, others have experienced the car. Others have experienced the car being 60 miles from my house. Someday soon I will repeat that run, to demonstrate that it did NOT 'tax the batteries too much'.


Electronics Power Steering Power Brakes and Vacuum system Drive System Batteries


Links and Resources


V0.01 schematics (as authored)

this link will take you to the index of v0.01 schematics and mechanical drawings. These will be very rough, the first working drafts of each doc.

Car information (as collected)

this link will take you to the index of car information collected thus far.

Rather more pictures than you care to wade through

here are unsorted pictures of the car's construction.

Intranet

If you're a member of BRAT or Prof McFarland's EV 202, just email me and I'll add you to the intranet. This may include scans of manual pages, final revision schematics, and things that the general public can't see.

Collected Wisdom

Lee Hart on animorphising batteries and some other things

Rich Rudman on MOSFETS

Bill Dube with a excellent article about transmission mounts

Bruce Parmenter with suggestions for waking up a long-dormant EV Chris Tromley vs. SUV driver