Electric 7 EV

posted Oct 19th 2006 9:30am by Will O'Brien
filed under: transportation hacks

Yup, more EV stuff today. This car [Cache mirror]is just so impressive that I think it’s definitely worthy. The car is a Birkin S-3 reproduction kit. Instead of the 4 cylinder, he put in a 3 phase 100HP, yes, 100HP electric motor. That’s pretty kickin. The *really* interesting twist is the battery pack. Multiple hybrid car battery cells (think prius NiMH) were salvaged to provide the juice. It runs around on tires designed for the EV1.

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Comments [24]

Reader Comments

The Lotus Seven-style car is really perfect for a ev

Posted at 10:03 pm on Oct 19th, 2006 by captsnuffy

Is 100hp more than the original lotus 7 engine? At any rate the power:weight ratio must be insane.

Posted at 12:52 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by wyatt_z

Not only that, but hes running the motor directly to the wheels, and electric motors have CRAZY torque all through the RPM range. That thing must take off like a bat out of hell.

Posted at 2:45 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by Jozer

Wow. Just wow.
Only problem I see though is this…

It needs to be green and yellow, with the registration plate “kar 120c”!

Posted at 2:50 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by Tavor

wow we already crash the site

Posted at 8:34 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by verycool

Pretty sweet add Some big Wheel covers, chrome, and a flame paint job and you have an electric hotrod

Posted at 8:58 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by Drew

Google Cache:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:kSl8R6LgMFEJ:www.electric7.com/+http://www.electric7.com/&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Posted at 9:40 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by DriveSoSlow

flame paint job? How about a lightning-style paint job? :D

Posted at 10:15 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by Mike Vroegop

wow, we alredy blew thier server…..

Posted at 10:33 am on Oct 20th, 2006 by Bob

is it just me or does the coral cache not have all of the images? it says 400-Bad Request on most of them…

this is a cool idea- and i really like how the interior turned out (from the few pictures that i was able to see of it)

Posted at 1:04 pm on Oct 20th, 2006 by tyler

Does anyone here know how to get a hold of some LRR (low rolling resistance) tires? I would like to get some for my turbo-diesel beetle, but I’m not sure if they sell them at regular tire places, or if you have to buy them specially.

Posted at 1:33 pm on Oct 20th, 2006 by farris

farris:
Check out http://www.tdiclub.com. The forums there will be a better place to ask about those questions. I love my TDI wagon, 52mpg chipped.

Posted at 2:53 pm on Oct 20th, 2006 by James

This is truely amazing… certainly not a job for the home hobbyist, but very, very impressive nevertheless. and I’m with #9- the acceleration must be something to behold.
Just frickin wow.

Posted at 3:06 pm on Oct 20th, 2006 by gcc

I drive an electric vehicle most days. For a 8 tonne lump they certainly get up and boogie real fast. :-)

My VW TDI is way cool too. Performance AND economy.

Posted at 4:32 pm on Oct 20th, 2006 by zap

I’d be throwing an motor speed controller with an analogue input on the accelerator or a vfd/plc combo to control everything on the car.

Posted at 9:07 pm on Oct 20th, 2006 by Jonathan Webber

The original 7 had 49 and 70BHP depending on the model of the original year of production. although most replicas have 150BHP Plus, up to 600BHP from the turbo Hayabusa powered cars!

Posted at 12:47 am on Oct 21st, 2006 by JackNco

>>>It needs to be green and yellow, with the registration plate “kar 120c”!

Posted at 12:50 am on Oct 21st, 2006 by Sp`ange

lawl, i looked back at my comment and realized that i didn’t really relate it to the post at all…

it should have included a reference to the LRR’s from the EV1

Posted at 3:22 am on Oct 21st, 2006 by farris

He stole my idea! After reading the EVUK electric vehicle site I was all set on building an electric Se7en.. after I graduate that is. Still, I don’t think anyone’s built an electric Fisher Fury yet.. now that I want to see.
The site still appears unhappy (no images, just the home page HTML) and the coral cache gives error 400s, any other ideas or do we just have to wait for the traffic to die down a little?
#14- there are plenty of home hobbyists converting ice cars to electric, if anything this should be easier because you don’t have to work with the car’s old transmission and so on. Google electric car conversion to see just how many people already do it.
I’m certainly appreciating all the ev stuff on hackaday- please keep it up, we need to persuade more people that electric cars aren’t hopelessly impractical milk floats any more!

Posted at 8:21 am on Oct 22nd, 2006 by PKM

Check out the movie “Who killed the Electric Car” (2006), a little off topic, yes… but I haven’t seen it advertised

Posted at 6:50 pm on Oct 25th, 2006 by Ryan

For all the EV enthusiasts who want to know a little more about the car (the information on the site is pretty sparse), I found a brief post by the maker here: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/ev/2515/
He mentions his charger and his source for the batteries (scrappers, even in january 2002) and tires- if anyone can find contact details, I’d love to ask him for some tech specs (the rather wooly “re-engineered to produce four times the original capacity and power” statement could do with elaboration).

Posted at 11:53 am on Oct 28th, 2006 by PKM

hate to burst your bubble, but the acceleration would not be as “bat-out0of-hell”-ish as you may think. sure electric motors have crazy torque, but thats only because the power output remains the same. power and torque are related, power=(torque x RPM) /some constant, therefore the torque would be around infinity at zero RPM, but the power is not, and the POWER defines the acceleration.

Posted at 7:09 pm on Dec 8th, 2006 by jRoc

I’m not sure if the horsepower figures listed here are the ICE (internal combustion engine) equivalent, but because electric motors are measured at continuous power and ICE are measured at peak power, you can get a rough conversion buy multiplying the rating on the electric motor by 8 or 10. eg, a 20 HP electric motor is approx equivalent to a 160-200 HP ICE.

Posted at 10:51 pm on Jan 14th, 2007 by xenor

I used to have a Lotus Seven. it had about 120hp, and it really flyed. so an EV with 100hp must fly also