What happened to this vehicle? Obviously I haven't updated this site in several years. For the benefit of anyone who might stumble across this site, here is a 2021 update.
In 2018 I decided it was time to pass the truck along to the next owner. I had not been driving it very much because I lived close to my office and I biked to work. So it mostly sat in my garage and maintenance became a chore for something I didn't really use much. Also, the batteries were about 7 years old at this point and I was starting to get some warning signals from the battery pack.
One time while driving up a hill on a local freeway, the battery alarm went off and persisted. In the past the battery alarm would sometimes turn on when under heavy load, especially in cold weather. But the battery alarm cleared once the load was reduced. In this particular incident the battery alarm stayed on even after letting back on the throttle. It did clear when I got off the freeway and was driving really easy on flat roads. But when I checked the pack at home I found that one cell had much lower state of charge than the others (I found this by manually charging the cells until they hit the cutoff point). After that I was spending more time doing manual balancing to make sure that the cells were all fully charged. And related to the state of the battery pack, I was also starting to see some of the BMS boards fail and I had to replace them.
I found another EV enthusiast and electronics hobbyist who was interested in the vehicle. I knew he wanted the working vehicle and not just to part it out, so I made him a deal he couldn't refuse. And yes, I did fully inform him of all the issues with the vehicle and the battery.
In the end, I drove the vehicle for 7 years for a total of 10700 electric miles.
I will leave this web site up for as long as I can and will try and respond to any questions in the future.
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