EV Run to Adelaide AGM and Festival, 2010

Originally posted by woody, from the EV Run to Canberra AGM 2009 topic Congrats David, awesome trip.

Yes, seconded!

The Brisbane/Sydney/Canberra routes converge at Hay, NSW about 625km from Adelaide.

According to Google Maps, there isn't so much as a toilet stop for 133 km to Balranald. So the vehicles attempting this had better have 150 km range.

We should at least be able to drive from there in a couple of days.

655 km (per Google maps; why does it disagree with other maps? Maybe it's just more realistic), is almost as far as Melbourne to Canberra, which David did with 2 overnight stops (each way).

A lesser plan would be to drive about 5 cars from Sydney with a car trailer - 4 on the trailer charging with one driving at any one time - would be a fun road trip.

Heh. Initially I thought you meant that each EV should be capable of towing the other four, plus trailer.      But I see now that you mean a diesel truck set up as a 4-car trailer with a honking great alternator that can charge 4 EVs at once... is there such a thing? And the other e-vehicle drives behind it. Maybe the truck could charge one EV at once, or more conveniently, charge all four turned down to about 1/4 or less of their usual rate. Actually, I saw what I thought was a 3-phase outlet on the Home Ice Cream truck today, so maybe significant charging is possible. Of course, that means the EVs are mostly charged from diesel. I guess the truck is the support for the fifth EV: if it runs into trouble, the sick EV is swapped for one of the others and the convoy continues, rotating through the 4 running EVs (or back to 5 if it just needed charging).

I think that the flaw with that plan is that it's surely a significant hassle to shuffle cars on a car trailer. Not the sort of thing you'd want to be doing every 100 km on a 1400 nkm journey. Still, it's probably quicker than waiting for a charge from mains. Also remember that David had two chargers (one for each pack chemistry?), so he probably managed almost twice the speed of charge that most EVs would get.

Brisbane to Adelaide (2025 km) isn't much further via Sydney at 2299 km (via Mt Colah is similar at 2292 km, via Canberra 2363 km, via Melbourne 2413 km, via Geelong 2467 km). So *if* we Brisbaners were nutty enough to attempt this, we could possibly tow to one of these cities (Sydney/Mt Cola, Melbourne, Geelong, Canberra, or Hay) and go electric from there. We could leave the tow and trailer in that city. Woody: how big is your back yard?

More crazy thoughts: the tow (and trailer?) could be a "support vehicle", if you have two drivers. The EV (well, the MX-5 at least) could race ahead to the next town and plug in, with the support vehicle arriving 10 minutes later. The support vehicle could rescue the e-vehicle in the event that something went wrong.

For nutty Brisbaners with a Solar installation business (Weber?), I wonder if it would be possible to drag along some solar panels and make it a really green journey? Maybe the trailer when not towing the e-vehicle could have a couple of panels on it, storing energy in a small battery that could somehow transfer its charge to the e-vehicle. It's a pity that the tow vehicle would be burning a lot of oil, and the MX-5's boot could store maybe 50 W of panels... I'm guessing that only about 1 kW of panels would be practical (with a tow and trailer), which would be a pretty slow charge. Of course if solar charging, you'd drive at night and rest during the day.

The trip to Adelaide is probably not one for solar charging; it's more for a leisurely holiday and with a larger e-vehicle capable of towing a trailer (so not the MX-5).

Well, it's fun to dream.

Admins: feel free to move this to an appropriate home, and convert to an announcement thread if deemed appropriate.

Originally posted by coulomb Woody: how big is your back yard?

I'm trying to figure out where to put a garage on our property, backyard is inaccessible to vehicles, maybe 2 cars by crane anyway (previous owner built a granny flat and now it's a dodgy strata title subdivision) but there is plenty of street parking since the only thing nearby is houses and they all have carports / driveways / garages.

Hi Coulomb,
Dave has 2 on board chargers but they both charge the lithium pack.
The Lithiums feed the lead acid, which power the motor and protect the lithiums from excess discharge.
The total capacity should give 100km maximum range, but he was getting over 130km, so there is some sort of synergy in the set-up.
(He might also have been discharging the Lithiums more than he should)
Dave's original plan for up to 6 EV's going to Canberra was to have a truck tow a commercial generator (bio-diesel)and stage the arrivals for re-charging. You also need to pre-arrange charging at points like caravan parks, schools and motels taking into account your range.
If the truck was a car carrier it could also act as a recovery vehicle.
All up we considered 3 support vehicles, a lead ICE or hybrid car, the truck towing the generator, and a following ICE towing a car trailer as a recovery vehicle.

Hi,
Our EV Festival website has now been updated to include details of accommodation.

Website

Eric.


Edited by evric - 23 July 2010 at 2:15pm

If anyone wants cheaper & with charging & sharing please contact me in the next few weeks & Ill find something suitable. DS

Originally posted by LightningEV I hit a snag, The $24,000 Certifiaction fee for an LEP-2-ICV-EV.

Ouch! Is this for the first of a type, or only because you want to make more than one?

Ill be going but route is via Ballarat & Horsham