RMIT e-racing 2008

Post by **Taffy** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 03:41

-Was not sure if this was here or under ev racing-

As we have officially launched the car i thought i would post some pictures of the green machine.

Technical:
Advanced DC K91 motor
Curtus 1221C controller
30 (split into two sidepods) thundersky lithium ion 40ah batteries
Carbon fibre monocoque tub with steel tube rear frame bolted on
Direct chain drive
Spool (locked rear axle)
Coil over shocks all round
Weight (no driver): 188kg

Will be running at 2008 F-SAE championships november 27th -30th in werribee vic.
It has not moved under its own power yet due to some delays in source some of the electronics, hopefully will have some video of it running on monday of next week.

In build

Launch night presentation

Back end

Left side

R

Right Side

Batteries all hooked up

Inside the cockpit (old steering wheel, we have a new one now)

Post by **acmotor** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 06:53

Fantastic !
We so need this sort of EV to get the public attention.

But what has holden got to do with it ? Don't tell me the car crusher put money into it !
How about thundersky ?

What ever it takes.

You can always swap to LiPo next year.

Post by **Richo** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 07:11

Holden's go faster

Post by **antiscab** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 07:18

30 40AH,
should be good for 10kw.

HINT: do insulate and do 2x full (ie 1C to 2.6v) discharge-recharge cycles right before the event.
get those cells toasty, they then might be good for 20kw.

Matt

Post by **Taffy** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 13:59

Re Holden: They proved some technical help and a couple of banks of super capacitors as we were looking at running a hybrid battery cap system to start with. With our starting budget this did not end up looking possible so we settled for batteries only. We still have them and might do some testing with them externally connected to the car on a dyno to see what kind of performance (acceleration wise) boost they can give.

Thundersky: No money from them, we had to pay.

Sponsors are:
AutoCRC - massive thanks to them
Bender - provided saftey cut offs.
Holden - technical support and the super caps.
RMIT uni - equipment, materials and technical staff
RMIT RU racing SAE team - letting us use there workshop.

RE batteries:
We are doing 3 full cycles before running.
Also have two sets which we can quickswap. They sit in there own trays inside the battery box, in the picture of the batteries you can see two aluminum tabs over the top, these allow the whole pack to be lifted out.

Post by **evkartalex** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 17:19

nice nice nice!@#!@#

Post by **acmotor** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 17:56

Taffy,

This is a sore point with me.
It should be Credit where credit is due. Particulary at this stage of EV development.

It is Thundersky who have "sponsored" your vehicle by making the TS cells available for you to purchase at a price you could afford.

It is those cells that enable the EV to be viable.
To ignore that is to deny the fundamental principle of BEV electric transport.

I am not waving the TS flag other than to say if lithium technology was still in the US hands you would have paid $200,000 for the pack.
(and GM would have owned the battery rights)

IMHO, you should give prime place to TS promo on the vehicle. They have done more for your vehicle than anyone else, even if they haven't bought their way in.

The super cap bank is very likely to be a requirement for acceleration in the furure. (although I am guessing the one you were given is a toy, or boat anchor - do you have specs ? how many kw minute ?)
Even then, credit should go to the manufacturer first (Maxwell ?).

If you want to get sponsorship from the latest wizbang battery manufacturers, then start by promoting the battery you use now.
Lithbattboss might then donate an upmarket battery pack with higher specific power than TS so they can get their name out there. (not holden's)

Post by **Lowndsy** » Wed, 05 Nov 2008, 19:49

whats a ball park figure of the cost of this beast? reason i ask is that i go to Edith Cowan Uni in perth. we have a "motorsport" degree which runs under the bachelor of technology. These guys run the SAE team here and we are about to enter our first season next year. at the moment there are no engineering students on the team (i will be the first and probably only next year)

i really want to push to team over to electric SAE over the year (at the moment there are no regs allowing electric in our SAE racing) so will need some info to feed them. How long did it take to build?

Post by **Taffy** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 03:22

acmotor i dont disagree with anything you are saying but we ran this with the attitude if not directly help the team we are not going to put logos on there. Its the same as in motorsport (logos for $$$), you dont advertise Benz if your driving a holden just because he advanced the technology.
Will find out the specs for the caps and get back to you.

Lowndsy -
If you guys have a chance come over at the end of the month and look at the SAE comp or talk with the uni of WA guys. That is one of the best teams going around along with RMIT. See if you can get one of there older cars and use that as a starting point to design yours.
Also the motto of "Simple and light" seems to get things along way. To give you some idea of the amount of money SAE teams run on i think the big ones are close to 100K these days.

On to the electric SAE car. We are using the Hybrid rules as a guide on most things, though we ignored some parts as they are not really relevant.
Cost: Conversion ~$20K dont have the final figure yet.
But we have access to (Free) carbon fibre + autoclave, full workshop, tech staff, composites lab and a very developed SAE team to bounce questions off, "borrow bolts" and steal tools!

We have purchased
2 x battery packs
Charger, 2 x controllers, battery management system, various electrical things.
ADC K91
Bearings, CNCing, some materials, paint, vinyls, other mechanical odds and ends.

If you have any questions feel free to ask... That reminds me someone on here asked me for photos of the rear end of SAE cars a while back. Sorry i lost your email in the piles i have been dealing with. Sorry.

Cheers
Taffy
taffy.flynn (at) student (dot) rmit (dot) edu (dot) au

Post by **acmotor** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 04:49

That's fine Taffy, just don't sell your soul .....

Keep up the good work.

Post by **Taffy** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 05:30

Haha, i will be sure not too. We are building an electric SAE car and trying to prove to others it can be done. If people want details they will see what we used to do it.

Will post some videos of how things go with some testing later on.
Not sure if i can post testing details of the caps as they are holdens. I will clear what testing data we can release and see about making up a pdf of the results + maybe some thoughts from the team on there areas to give others a leg up.
Most of it should be fine but as we are given a large investment we should clear it by Autocrc first.

Taffy

Post by **acmotor** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 05:48

Shudder !!!

holden have bought your soul and your tongue already ?

At UWA I will not accept sponsorship unless results can be published otherwise you become just another closed shop business. There are enough of those already that have us in the environmental and economic situation we are in today.

Post by **Taffy** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 13:42

acmotor i hope you are joking there, cause what you are implying is rather insulting. (Hopefully the translation of forum text when reading got lost)

If you have a problem with holden take it up with them, dont go around sl*gging off others just because they gain sponsorship from them. They have been supportive of us and not placed any restrictions on our activities.

This is a research project and as such the results are partly owned by those who fund/support them. You can not just go about giving away details about someones technology, there are secrets in business and that must be respected. I dont come into your home demanding to know your bank balance, your pin and the recipe to your chicken pie.

If anyone has any questions about the project i am more then happy to answer them but i have no intention of wasting a thread defending our sponsors. They have PR teams which will be then happy to do that.

Cheers
Taffy

Post by **acmotor** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 17:43

Hey Taffy,

You said it not me !!

Taffy wrote:
Not sure if i can post testing details of the caps as they are holdens. I will clear what testing data we can release and see about making up a pdf of the results
Taffy

I am purely responding to your posts, pictures and text and expressing my opinion.

I am no new-comer to research at both Universities and in the private sector. Yes they are different.

It concerns me that a publically funded institution can gagged in any way by a sponsor. That is what your post said to me.

There is no slinging off here, just direct observation of the post you presented.

I am also mindful of history.

Perhaps someone else can comment here.

Anyway, keep smiling and keep up the good work.

Post by **Taffy** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 18:43

The project is part owned by RMIT, the people (us) who undertake it and those that sponsor it. There is an agreement were we will inform all parties before advertising information about this project, they can say they do/dont want this released (with in reason).
I dont see there being any problems with us releasing information but i wont be doing so without getting the ok from all invested parties. They cant use the research without us and vise versa. You misread what i was saying possibly.

I would not worry about this project being gagged.

Well i better get back to building this thing, will keep updating. Hopefully we can get some usefully dyno time soon.

Post by **Lowndsy** » Thu, 06 Nov 2008, 23:29

taffy, thanks for the reply, unfortunately i wont be able to head that way though i would love to

i actually asked a few months back about a transfer to RMIT but couldnt get enough unit exemptions to make it worth while.

i dont think UWA would be very happy about sharing info with an ECU student on their SAE car :p i will deffinately be in touch if i manage to get something happening here at ECU though. im pretty jelous of your team right now haha. best of luck racing, hopefully it will inspire a big change in SAE and classes will open to accomadate it.

with regards to Holden, their name is being dragged through the gutters on these forums, but good on them for their support on the project. no-one can be entirely sure for the reasons that certain companies do certain things and every manufacturer can be the victim of slander in some way or another. im sure toyota and ford both could have put up money for the project (especially toyota since they have $600M of tax payers money now and all...), but end of the day it was holden who did, giving support to the promotion of EVs and doing it through an educational institution. holden source a lot of their engineers from RMIT, so promoting EVs to their future engineers can onloy be seen as a good thing right?

Post by **Taffy** » Fri, 07 Nov 2008, 04:19

I am more then happy to help (I didnt specialize in any one field just tried to make it all work). Sad to hear UWA might not be able to help, but i guess no ones wants to give up there hard earned gains.
We wont be officially recorded as competing but we are allowed to run on the track and do dynamic events. So we will have times to compare to the petrol powered versions.

I was really close to getting a job with holden, was in the last 10 for grad spots. Missed out but it was for the best as they cut there grad program for next year. Was annoyed at the time but thats life, move on. I believe most EV research is being done state side.
I was very tempted to apply to work for Tesla, not sure how that app would go but would be an amazing job. SWMBO AKA girlfriend was not impressed lol. Truthfully i think she is jealous of the car as i spend so much time with it.

Another team to contact might be the uni of ballarat (Victoria). They are a small team which operate on a shoe string budget, they do struggle to make the starting grid sometimes. My dad lectures there and teaches some of those student. Anyone who can design, build and run one of these at SAE comp has done something amazing.

With SAE the big motor companies wont directly fund any running team, they instead sponsor SAE Australia and the event to make things fair.

Post by **Taffy** » Thu, 13 Nov 2008, 10:46

Just thought i would check in and let u all know that as of 3:11am RMIT e-racing 2008 was a running vehicle. Had some issues with the accelerator cable and the location of some of the wiring when the diver was in the car.

Very fun to drive!
I will post some videos etc in the days to come but im off to sleep.

Post by **Electrocycle** » Thu, 13 Nov 2008, 14:50

sounds like fun!
I'm hoping to take my bike to a race track in the near future and set an official electric motorcycle lap record, which should be pretty easy since there isn't one yet

Post by **acmotor** » Thu, 13 Nov 2008, 18:12

Great news Taffy,

The feeling of your (first) EV driving under its own power in priceless.

You can understand my apprehension toward vehicle manufacturers for depriving the world of this feeling for so long !

Post by **moemoke** » Thu, 13 Nov 2008, 19:00

Well done Taffy, did you have a deadline or are you always up that late.

can't wait to see the vid's

Post by **Taffy** » Thu, 13 Nov 2008, 19:03

lol, not generally. But we do have a deadline. 27th Nov FSAE-A @ Werribee, Vic we are running. We need as much run time as we can get.

We found that our performance calcs dont even look to be close @ 16A we were around 40km/hr (slow accel but it just kept going till i ran out of car park). We had estimated closer to the 100A mark to get it moving. Be interesting to see when we push up the power.

Post by **Taffy** » Sat, 15 Nov 2008, 20:30

Some footage from the night testing. Only low power testing so far, hopefully monday we will do some high power stuff.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=3ea0qE3VodY
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=-MxVZElTA_Q
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zYXJloafwCo
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPbwvq1O0QU

Post by **Taffy** » Wed, 19 Nov 2008, 17:58

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=P-IycEK5vXs

Testing again but this time with a bit more power.

Post by **Electrocycle** » Wed, 19 Nov 2008, 19:12

looking good!

I need another test platform I think