[Garage 54] is no stranger to vehicle-related projects of the “because why not?” variety, and their latest is using 50 cordless drills combined into a monstrous mega-motor to turn a gutted (and extended) Lada into an electric vehicle (EV).
Doing this leans on some of [Garage 54]’s earlier projects, such as replacing the aforementioned Lada’s engine block with a frame containing sixteen chainsaws. That means they don’t need to start completely from scratch, and have a frame design that can drop into the vehicle once the “engine” is constructed.
Here’s what’s in the new engine: each of the drills has its chuck replaced with an aluminum pulley, and belts connect each group of drills to an output shaft. Ideally, every drill motor would run at the same time and at exactly the same speed, but one works with what they have. [Garage 54] originally worked to synchronize the drills by interfacing to each drill’s motor control board, but eventually opted to simply bypass all controls and power each drill’s motor directly from the batteries. Initial tests are done by touching bare cable ends with a turned-away face and squinted eyes, but we expect “Just A Big Switch” to end up in the final assembly.
It looks wild and we can think of more than a few inefficiencies present in a system like this, but the output shaft does turn and torque is being transferred, so the next step is interfacing to the car’s factory gearbox.
If it powers the car in any meaningful way, that Lada might very well become the world’s most gloriously hacked-together EV. And hey, if the power output of the EV motor is disappointing, you can just make your own.
[via Motor1]
Drill batteries make good ebike batteries, you can get nice quality and cheap packs new from aldi or lidl. Using whole drills though i guess why not lol. I would like to see battery swop stations for EV cars in europe soon, I think they have them already is china. EV vehicles could last decades if we introduce battery swop. Same for ebikes, same for emoto, there is no reason to keep the lifespan of an ev limited to the battery life especially as the price of the vehicle is so high on initial purchase. People could upsize or downsize the battery depending upon changing range requirements and individual budgets.
NIO has a system of battery swapping stations in Europe, there are 14 of them in Germany alone
Unfortunately you end up with dewalt, milwaukee, bosch etc batteries that are all incompatible and the same would likely happen with cars. Are they even compatible across generations, can I plug a new tool battery into a device from 20 years ago and have it just work?
I’m fairly happy with the Nissan Leaf’s repairability. Battery cells can be swapped easily and the whole battery pack is physically compatible with newer generations so can be swapped if you include a device to translate canbus messages. Add some cooling and make the canbus translation devices an official product and that approach could work for other manufacturers. Maybe it’s already used, I don’t know how battery repairs work for a VW id3 with it’s 3 different battery sizes.
it should really be made easier to do than it is, universality just like filling at the petrol pump (for most ev cars, i understand high performance ev cars need high amp batteries so that is the exception)
“Unfortunately you end up with dewalt, milwaukee, bosch etc batteries that are all incompatible and the same would likely happen with cars.”
I sometimes wonder why it has to be like this.
The ordinary car battery was standardized. Well, more or less.
There are 6v (Moped, Trabi) and 12v (car) and 24v (truck) models, but they’re standard for each vehicle type pretty much.
Good old capitalism. Nobody wants to just sell you an occasional battery if they can get you to spring for a whole new set of power tools.
I understand. I don’t like that. What I can say about capitalism is that it has often, if not always, led to a downward spiral.
Things get cheaper, but quality also goes down.
Then, due to inflation and other economic problems, people make less money and get used to cheap prices as if they were normal prices.
Then things get cheaper again and quality goes down again. Until we eat plastic food out of paper plates and get sick.
That’s essentially how the sick air travel business works.
That’s why I think it’s important that not all parties play the game.
If only two companies (or players) had principles/standards/ethical considerations and continued to hold on to a minimum quality, the others couldn’t continue to produce for the cheapest quality.
Because people would see the difference very clearly every day.
And that’s how good capitalism (if there is such a thing) should be.
It should always have some sort of counter element that ensures that the balance is maintained. So market freedom: yes, but within reasonable limits.
Fair behavior should be rewarded by institutions so that companies enjoy satisfying their customers and producing good products.
It’s a mystery to me why this isn’t just considered natural in real life, because it could be a win-win situation to everyone.
Except the guy that sells batteries. These arguments always make me chuckle.
To the naP… if you own a power tool with a special battery the guy who sells you the batteries almost always is the guy who sold you the power tools. There are third parties but you are bombarded with FUD if you dare consider them and some of them really are sketchy.
Euro laws have mandatory power tool compatibility now, with adapters as an interim solution.
“I sometimes wonder why it has to be like this.”
Because the EU hasn’t mandated a standard?
Nah, there’s a few dozen different sizes, at least in the UK.
Last time I replaced mine, despite it matching according to the documentation, it was a different size to the old one, and was very hard to fit – the cables didn’t reach, and had to be re-routed slightly and one of the nuts was almost inaccessible because it was further back under another part of the car.
Milwaukee has publicly put out a plan for long term stability in their M12 and M18 tool lines so they are trying to address this issue – I commend that effort.
The future is not guaranteed – I’ve outlived many “lifetime” warranties (turns out it’s their “life” and not mine being referred to) but I do commend the effort as I said.
Battery packs from 20 years ago are rebuildable given the batteries chemistry is still available – I’ve done it and if the tool was useful then, it’s useful now. I’ve also done work to adapt newer batteries to more legacy tools to take advantage of better batteries and that’s been a pretty solid return on effort there as well.
Old tools can be given new battery packs, but newer tools are built to use higher performance batteries and so perform a lot better. That’s probably worth the upgrade for most contractors.
Not sure about the specific brands you mentioned, but I have a Ryobi drill that I bought around 25 years ago that still works and is more than happy with the latest generation Ryobi 5Ah lithium batteries.
25 yea old Ryobi drill probably still has more years left on it than a new Ruobi drill does. Same for Black & Decker.
DeWalt sells batteries. The tools are just are just the various decorations for them 😁
only way it could work is if you leased/rented the right to a battery, no one wants to have their brand new battery swapped and risk getting an old one if they own the battery. And it battery wear really that big an issue compared to all the other things that wear out on a car
that is a solved problem. we use that system with gaz bottles here in europe. the bottles need recertifying every 10 years so ever year, the remaining value drops. if you swap an newer bottle for an older one, you are compensated for the difference, and the other way round also. the recertifying year is stamped in on the side.
IIRC, 20# propane bottles (your “gaz”?) in the USA are stamped with the year of manufacture, 12 years beyond that date and the propane suppliers will not refill it. We also have a number of companies that let you swap empty bottles for full ones. I have never tried to swap an outdated bottle for a refilled one so I don’t know if that is allowed. I do have 2 outdated bottles if they do accept them. I have had a bottle recertified once, and that was around 30 years ago.
Actually, you can recertify the old bottles. But that requires time and money – they pressure test them.
Thanks [fhunter]!
gas bottles are dirt cheap compared to EV batteries and work just the same no matter how old and used they are
My response will be far below the original comment, but I’d like to refer to this part:
They are convenient, but the cells are not really the right type. Ebike motors usually consume modest(*) current for a prolonged time, while power tool batteries are designed for high current. It’s a different point on the energy density vs power density trade-off, effectively your battery pack would be heavier than necessary for a given capacity. Perhaps more expensive too, but economies of scale can have a greater impact here.
(*) The “modest” current above assumes that your battery pack is reasonably sized. In theory, you could run an e-bike off a single Lidl 40Wh pack (assuming that the motor can run on 18-20V). The pack doesn’t specify a power rating, but one can guesstimate several hundreds of watts. This current rating would be reasonable, maybe even a little on the low side, but the capacity of the pack wouldn’t be satisfactory to most users.
It’s more like power tools are designed to work at couple dozen watts and e-bikes are at couple hundred watts.
The brushed DC motor in most consumer grade screwdrivers is barely above 20 Watts.
Also, when you see power tool manufacturers quote output power as “160 UWO”, what it means is peak torque x max speed divided by some fudge factor. It’s a completely meaningless figure.
The commenter referred to drill batteries, so I assumed the popular 18-20V category. This covers not only drills but also circular saws or lower-powered angle grinders.
The cells in such packs are rated for about 20-30A current. A random makita 18V circular saw is rated to about 600-700W. This is very comparable to an ebike, but as I discussed earlier, the capacity of that single pack will certainly not be enough. And if you start adding more packs, you suddenly have lots of excess power, which comes with a weight penalty.
600-700W is big for an ebike, the EU definition and what is legal is usually <250W
I’m looking at a list of DeWalt drills and most of them have a peak rating under 300 W.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Also look at the size difference between a single power tool battery and a normal E bike battery.
The cells in power tools are usually rated for 20-30 A, that means a single “18 V” or “20 V” battery pack can output 370-555 W assuming 3.7 V nominal voltage. That also assumes just 2 or 2.5 Ah packs. The 5 Ah packs can do double the current rating and power output because they are basically two of the regular packs in parallel.
Many of the common consumer grade screwdrivers/drills use 12 V or 10.8 V packs in 1.5-2.5 Ah size. These are not rated for tens of amps. I would not trust them to put out more than 50 W continuously. There is a big difference between the cheap shop brand ones and name brand models that cost 5x more.
Also, the peak current draw of a drill happens at stall, and that’s not how you use a drill. The peak mechanical power output happens at roughly half the stall torque(current) x speed for a BLDC motor and you don’t want to apply more torque beyond that because the speed and power would start to drop and the drill would bind.
So for practical use, assuming the motor is drawing the battery max at stall, you can pretty much halve your expectation. The battery may supply more power than that but it’s almost never required to.
https://a.pololu-files.com/picture/0J6476.1200.jpg?37d25b538bd34ba4233fe286cebf8aa3
You want to be operating on the left half of the power curve towards max speed to not bog down your drill. If you go over the hump, your power demand rises while your mechanical power output drops and the drill bites it. In all likelyhood, the motor isn’t even sized to draw the full amp rating out of the battery to have a margin of safety for when the battery is empty.
I’m sure it could be pretty easy.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0B70EUL856E
Top Gear did this already ~20 years ago, but this one seems like it has a better shot of working. I would reccomend a golf cart speed controller.
Feels like a really strange approach to buiding an engine. Thats why I love it.