Lots of electric delivery vans are already on the streets. ---- Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA> wrote: > For electric cars small and light is definetly the way to go as in Kim's example below. One can then wonder is there any use and potential market niche for an electric VW bus? Having slept on the question, I remembered how our university has several delivery vans for delivering internal mail and packages, carrying the tools and material of the university maintenance people etc. Currently these are full size domestic vans. The typical use is to drive a few hundred yards, leave the van on idle, deliver the package or do whatever business in the building for 5 min, then drive a few hundred yards to the next building. Our campus is only about 2x1 mile so the distance driven is neglible, but I bet the vans go though a full tank of fuel in a day anyway. I'm sure many large and mid size companies, government campuses etc have fleets of vans for similar local delivery purposes.
Here one could think that a smaller and lighter electic van based on a light chassies like the old VW T2 and T3 designs could do the job well. The limited range of electric batteries won't be an issue, and there is no waste due to idling. VW T2's are still being produced in Brazil. The electric drivetrain used by JD in his conversion (link below) cost I believe about $3000 for the batteries and $2000 for motor and electronics. That's more than the gas or Diesel engine it would replace, but not extremely much more. With higher production numbers cost of the electric drivetrain could probably be halved.
Martin
________________________________ From: Kim Brennan <kimbrennan@mac.com> To: Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@yahoo.ca> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 10:39:27 PM Subject: Re: Electric conversions (Chevy Volt) At work, one of the other EV cars, is a self converted Toyota MR2. He says he gets about 80 miles on charge currently, and is planning to increase the number of batteries he has to increase his range to 120-150 miles. His current weight of batteries is about 500 pounds.
On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:08 PM, Poppie Jagersand wrote:
>
>
>
>
>________________________________
> From: Kim Brennan <kimbrennan@MAC.COM>
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 8:23:19 PM
>Subject: Electric conversions (Chevy Volt)
>
>>I recently replaced my main commuter car with a (leased) 2013 Chevy Volt. I'm addicted to electric only (300+ all electric miles only on it since I got it.)
>>I know, in the
past, a few folk have done electric conversions (not necessarily members of this list). And loaded up the van with lots of (lead acid) batteries and got something like 16 miles per charge out the conversions.
>> But times have changed. There are other battery choices and more choices in electric motors. Did Otto(? or was it Detmar?) with his stretch ever get the front wheels running in electric motor?
>
>
>Here is a type 2 conversion to electric with detailed information on all steps.
>http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8012&start=150#p580320
>
>He has about 80kg of high tech LiFePO4 batteries with 7.7kWh capacity. At 450Wh/mile he gets a range of 17miles per charge. For comparison, smaller lighter cars like the Nissan Leaf uses around 300Wh/mile. The (unfortunately) now defunct
high tech Aptera used less than 150Wh/mile. An electric bicycle uses 15-20Wh/mile (there are at least 25 million electric bicycles in
China)
>
>Martin
>
--
David McNeely
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