As of today I have logged 1526 miles of almost daily service. My weekday round trip commute is about 12 miles and I usually put 20-30 miles each on Saturday and Sunday. I have used a total of 4350 Ah, which at 141V (nominal) is about 613 kWh. If I derate assuming a charging efficiency of 90% then that is about 680 kWh from the wall. At 13 cents/kWh that comes to about $90 of electricity to go 1526 miles.
more ...Today I drove the truck to my house. After "living" at Bill's house for about 1.5 years, today we declared it ready to drive home. So after spending the afternoon taking test rides and enjoying some good food and drink, tonight I drove it back to my house.
Once I got home, I plugged it into the socket in my garage that I installed just for this purpose. Here is a photo of my truck plugged in at my house (first charge at home).
Charging at home
Click to keep reading ... more ...
When I started this project I wanted to know how the weight of the truck would change. I was also hoping to change the weight distribution a little since the back end of the truck seemed light to me. We weighed the truck before removing the ICE (internal combustion engine) and after, and just recently weighed it again with all the electrics installed. Here are the results:
| / | Front Left | Front Right | Rear Left | Rear Right | Total | F/R |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICE | 902 | 834 | 650 | 638 | 3024 | 57/43 |
| Removed | 606 | 524 | 565 | 648 | 2443* | |
| Electric | 819 | 841 | 765 | 808 | 3233 | 51/49 |
Note: Total includes 100 lbs for transmission which was not in the vehicle when "Removed" measurement was made. more ...
Thanks to Bill taking some time out of his day yesterday, the truck is now street legal.
Inspection and Registration Stickers
If you look carefully you may notice that the inspection sticker is not the same as a normal car. Apparently the normal sticker is a safety plus emissions sticker, and this is a safety-only sticker. more ...
We took another test drive of the truck. This time it was a little longer, and in the day time. We drove it 8.5 miles in total. In that distance I used about 20Ah from the battery. Using a nominal voltage of 141V for the battery pack, that works out to be 332 Wh/mile. That is not too bad I suppose. I had seen estimates of anywhere from 250 to 400 Wh/mi, so I am not unhappy with that.
more ...A while back I made a post called First Test Drive. We hacked together something so we could briefly drive the truck using the go-kart as the power source. While this allowed us to test out the drivetrain, it wasn't really a very good test of what it will be like to drive the truck when it is finished.
Well, now we have done a real test drive !!!
more ...I was reviewing video and photos that I had not yet posted, I realized that I had not made a post about the first test drive of the truck. Yes that's right, we drove the truck already.
First test drive after motor installation
Since I will have a significant part of my battery pack under the bed, I need a way to easily access those batteries for maintenance. We thought about cutting the bed itself to make a hinged access door. But the obvious solution is to make the bed tilt-able.
Read on to see how we modified the truck so that I can tilt the bed up ...
more ...Today I drove the truck in what I think is the last trip with the internal combustion engine (ICE). I drove it from my house to the shop where we will be doing the work. I noticed a few weeks ago that I had a radiator leak and so I pretty much stopped driving it.
more ...
My 1993 Mazda B2600 - The conversion candidate
Here it is. This is my 1993 Mazda B2600 pickup. This is the last year that Mazda actually made these trucks. After '93, the Mazda B-series trucks were just relabeled Ford Rangers.