Honda Beat Electric Car (Performance Battery Electric Conversion)

Hello all at U-UKHBC

This is my first post on this forum, I am in the process of converting a Honda Beat into an EV, with the help of my local mechanic's Luke and Brent -

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Southe...654?ref=stream

and Steve at Jozztek http://www.jozztek.com/

I have a blog for the EV, I have been posting photo's & details of the build here -

http://electrobeatev.blogspot.co.uk/

The donor vehicle was acquired in November of 2012 and was selected on Steve's advice concerning curb weights of donor cars, basically I spent a while searching eBay for a local (to my location) "sports" car that was less than a grand and weighed less than 1000KG, I guess I was lucky as within a few searches I found a great looking Honda Beat just around the corner from me and after checking the curb weight it turned in at a tiny 760Kg, perfect, although it is only a 2 seater being a Honda it is built like a tank, it "had" a massive 63 BHP! with its tiny 3 cylinder petrol engine and came with a recent dyno readout (who bothered to dyno this!) claiming that the actual value was nearer 57 BHP.

My local mechanic Brent took it for a spin before he and Luke striped the engine & ancillaries from the car and he laughed at just how under powered it was for a "Sports car".

I specified from the outset to Steve at Jozztek that I was after a performance EV but wanted to keep the total build cost to less than 10K (GBP)

And with his advice I might just manage that (Update - Not Quite!), I have fitted -

10KW Lipo battery pack, 108 x Turnigy 5S1P LiPo packs (5Ah - 18.5V each) 12 banks in series to give the required 220V, 9 packs per bank.

10KW charger from Emotorwerks - http://www.emotorwerks.com/cgi-bin/VMcharger_V9.pl Kit form (cant afford the built one)

Kostov K9 220V Series wound DC motor.

Soliton Jr controller pack.

Along with a number of extras, bussbars, cycle analyst, dashboard monitors etc.

I have been using my 3D printer to produce ABS plastic parts primarily for the charger build (I built the 3D printer recently it's a RepRap Prusa Mendle derivative)

I am hoping that the beat should be approx. 3 times more powerful than stock and give me a 40 mile range, looking forward to burning some rubber ;-)

I also hope to be exhibiting the "Electro Beat" (as it has been affectionately named by my partner) at the Brighton Mini Maker Fair at the Corn Exchange on the 7th of September, assuming it is finished in time.

I also have a number of unwanted internal combustion parts that I will be posting on eBay for sale soon (I will also post links on this forum to give you guy's/girls the heads-up far a first look at anything you may be interested in).

Thanks for listening

Graham

Welcome Graham, glad you managed to post this at last!
It's s fascinating project, we look forward to seeing it up and running!

Paul w

Hello and welcome , sounds like a great project and should be a lot of fun , even if it is very expensive .
A 150bhp Beat really will be electrifying !!!! ( ill get my coat )

Very cool.!

Hiya beecee

It may be expensive to build initially but I have budgeted very carefully to make sure the car will pay for itself in 10 years, basically if I can make it last over 10 years it will be saving me approx £2000 per yer every year after it's 10th re-birthday, that includes a new set of batts within that 10 year period.

I am very interested in the Eco side of electric cars but unless they make you heart quicken people will never buy them, so it was performance car all the way.

It makes no sense to run a car until it falls apart or you are bored of it, then dump it and get a new one, that is definitely a throwaway "capitalist" ethos, To take a 20 year old modern classic such as the Beat and restore it to better than it was originally without dumping ton's of CO2 into the atmosphere and increasing the size of my carbon footprint to even bigger than it most likely is already is so much nicer and hopefully cheaper eventually.

I hope to convince as many others as possible that electric is the future and recycle/restore/reuse is the way forward, millions of perfectly function-able/restore-able cars are crushed every year purely because there is no market for them, and each one of them took thousands of man hours to create in the first place, insanity prevails in our western throwaway culture, I alone cannot hope to change this but I can make my small contribution.

also once I get the PV array up and running my transport fuel cost's will essentially drop to zero, now that is what I call getting one over the "MAN" ;-)

Graham

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Originally Posted by beecee

Hello and welcome , sounds like a great project and should be a lot of fun , even if it is very expensive .
A 150bhp Beat really will be electrifying !!!! ( ill get my coat )

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Hiya Witsend

Yeah Google chrome seems to work fine without stalling/crashing.

Thanks for all your help in getting me live.

Graham

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Originally Posted by eat808

Hiya beecee

It may be expensive to build initially but I have budgeted very carefully to make sure the car will pay for itself in 10 years, basically if I can make it last over 10 years it will be saving me approx £2000 per yer every year after it's 10th re-birthday, that includes a new set of batts within that 10 year period
I am very interested in the Eco side of electric cars but unless they make you heart quicken people will never buy them, so it was performance car all the way.

It makes no sense to run a car until it falls apart or you are bored of it, then dump it and get a new one, that is definitely a throwaway "capitalist" ethos, To take a 20 year old modern classic such as the Beat and restore it to better than it was originally without dumping ton's of CO2 into the atmosphere and increasing the size of my carbon footprint to even bigger than it most likely is already is so much nicer and hopefully cheaper eventually.

I hope to convince as many others as possible that electric is the future and recycle/restore/reuse is the way forward, millions of perfectly function-able/restore-able cars are crushed every year purely because there is no market for them, and each one of them took thousands of man hours to create in the first place, insanity prevails in our western throwaway culture, I alone cannot hope to change this but I can make my small contribution.

also once I get the PV array up and running my transport fuel cost's will essentially drop to zero, now that is what I call getting one over the "MAN" ;-)

Graham

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I do think this is a good thing , but the price would be too much for me , as the possible pay off is too far away , your looking at 10 years added to the life of an already 20 year old car before you see a return , part for a Beat may be a moot issue down the road .
Now that you have done this already , would the cost be much less second time around as you will have learnt from mistakes and loss of time possibly making it more atainible for others .

Think this is a super idea. Imagine in the future being able to buy an electric motor or conversion kit for your Beat. You've got my vote!
Need to get a manufacturer of the motors involved one day to make this more affordable. If you think about it, companies exist that specialise in tarting up various cars or fitting larger engines so why not electric conversions.

If you get the price down to under £5k i think you will be on a winner , above that its to big an outlay for to long a wait on any return . If money wasn't a issue I would do this tomorrow as I do agree is a good idea , and recon a 150 bop Beat would be immense fun .

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Originally Posted by beecee

If you get the price down to under £5k i think you will be on a winner , above that its to big an outlay for to long a wait on any return . If money wasn't a issue I would do this tomorrow as I do agree is a good idea , and recon a 150 bop Beat would be immense fun .

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Great project! Just wondering if you have estimated the range you will get assuming appropriately sporty driving???

Quote:

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Originally Posted by beecee

I do think this is a good thing , but the price would be too much for me , as the possible pay off is too far away , your looking at 10 years added to the life of an already 20 year old car before you see a return , part for a Beat may be a moot issue down the road .
Now that you have done this already , would the cost be much less second time around as you will have learnt from mistakes and loss of time possibly making it more atainible for others .

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Hiya beecee

Exactly the whole point of doing it was to see how much it would cost to convert a nice (i.e. sporty) car to electric and in the process learn how I could do it for less second time around.

I already have the second conversion planned it is an Mazda RX8 which admittedly is a much more common car (unique is nice but costly) but it does have several thing's going for it.

1) they come up regularly very cheap as people don't service the rotary engines properly and then wonder why they have compression failure!

2) I am hoping that because the gearbox is inline in an RX8 (unlike the transverse Beat's gearbox which I had to retain) I will be able to remove the entire gearbox and have the motor connect directly to the differential, thereby losing the huge weight in the gearbox. Less weight means less batteries which in turn means less cost. also I would save on the need to make expensive coupling plates and collars as I needed in the Beat to connect the motor to the gearbox, yet more cash saved.

3) several other people in the DIY electric car conversion game are already putting together a conversion "Kit" for the RX8 so it is very definitely likely to hit the market soon.

Also not everyone wants a performance car, it would be quite easy to make a "City" car conversion say from a Nissan Micra or equivalent (I am not saying a Micra is a good car to convert I have not investigated this as yet and as mentioned transverse gearboxes are more difficult, not sure what a Micra has but it is very light just like the Beat) this would likely cost considerably less as there would be no need for the performance motor for example, I am also looking at doing one of these after the RX8 is on the road (and depending on how much interest I get)

in reference to the "Payoff" if you (not you personally as you may only drive 1000 miles/year I have no idea) actually sit down and worked out how much it is costing to run your existing petrol guzzling car (as I did) you would realize that you are already paying more than this over the life of the car if you include taxes, fuel, and the heavy maintenance costs that ICE cars require.

I estimated that the ownership of an internal combustion car for someone who is commuting over 3-4K miles / year (average IMO) costs around £20K over 10 years that's £20K more than it cost you to buy the car in the first place basically that is just fuel and tax, and probably does not include the high cost of servicing on ICE cars.

So Electric cars are already starting to make sense here in the UK especially.

However there are catches

1) Range. To own an EV means driving differently, you cant just hit the "Gas" so to speak regardless of the cost to you or the environment and expect to pull into a EV charge point in every "Gas" station and charge in a few minutes as you can with an ICE car, well not yet at least, however that is why I spent £800 on just my charger, I should be able to charge the Beat in 1 hour assuming the current required is available. (the 1 hour charge is due to the tiny Battery pack I needed for the Beat which in turn is due to it's tiny weight once the ICE engine & ancillaries were removed.

2) Batteries, currently batteries are not particularly Eco friendly lithium is toxic if it is not recycled properly, although as mentioned better safer greener batteries are in the pipeline, and recycling is the order of the day.

3) Motors, this is a bit of a minefield, DC series wound, AC, Permanent Magnet Motors? they all have their pro's and con's but if you compare the first ICE engines to what we have now the future looks very bright.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mobius

Think this is a super idea. Imagine in the future being able to buy an electric motor or conversion kit for your Beat. You've got my vote!
Need to get a manufacturer of the motors involved one day to make this more affordable. If you think about it, companies exist that specialise in tarting up various cars or fitting larger engines so why not electric conversions.

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Hiya Mobius

This is very likely to happen conversion kits are already available albeit very expensive at the moment, however costs are dropping and small incremental improvements to battery technology are happening all the time (nanotech is driving this) I don’t think we are likely to have a battery revolution any time soon but the future is definitely looking up.
some manufacturers are already on board, The Kostov K9 has been officially paired with the Soliton Jr controller (hence me going for this combo for the Beat) this is one of the first official manufacturing get-together’s to happen in the DIY EV market, and a lot of people are exploiting it to the max.

Basically the Soliton Jr controller has been specifically designed with the Kostov K9 motor in mind.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by beecee

If you get the price down to under £5k i think you will be on a winner , above that its to big an outlay for to long a wait on any return . If money wasn't a issue I would do this tomorrow as I do agree is a good idea , and recon a 150 bop Beat would be immense fun .

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This is exactly what is required a less than 5K conversion kit for anyone who likes to work on cars or that can be given to a mechanic who likes a challenge to fit and can be fitted in a short space of time.

Time is the tricky part as currently you would be hard pressed to convert an ICE car into an EV in less than a year unless you had a dedicated 2 man team of 1 mechanic and 1 high power electrical engineer working full time on it.

Thanks for listening

Graham

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Originally Posted by steveinjapan

Great project! Just wondering if you have estimated the range you will get assuming appropriately sporty driving???

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Hi Steveinjapan

Well that is a good question, I specified 40 miles to the EV expert I have been getting my electrical advice from, however once I had purchased the 10KW battery pack and we had stripped the car of ICE engine parts the Beat turned out to be considerably lighter than we were expecting so I am hoping for somewhere between 60-100 miles, this will be one of the first things I will be testing along with top speed and charge time.

and just as in a gas fueled car it depends entirely on how you drive it, if I am racing I would expect around the 35-40 mile range, If I am hypermileing it I should get nearer 60-100 miles only time will tell, I will be posting results on the "diyelectriccar" forum, I will link them here also once I have some (3 weeks I hope until completion).

Graham

I look forward to updates , cheers

I don't really understand the 10KW part of the battery pack. Do you mean 10KWh? Also, what is the expected final kerb weight? I'm guessing if you have a 500kg shell with 50kg for the motor you might have 150kg of batteries (although that's some 20KWh and possibly £7, 000).

Edit: By my calcs you have 10kWh with those batteries so I'm assuming it will be around 75kg. How much did they cost?

What efficiency is the motor? If you can gain 10% efficiency you save 10% on batteries which saves you 3% on weight which saves you an extra 1% on batteries... We were looking at a 50kW YASA brushless motor which peaks at 92% but then it's £10,000!

I will have to read more when I get home as we (Uni team) are building a 200kg EV racecar.

Also, I see you have a Legnum VR4; I'm hoping to pick up a Galant VR4 next year!

Wow Graham, you crazy fool/genius. I like your style. Not sure this'll save you money, but it sounds like an awful lot of fun. Keep us all up to date.

When you're done, maybe consider entering it in the Future Car Challenge Eco-Rally? http://www.futurecarchallenge.com/ Though this year's event has been cancelled. In 2011, McLaren F1 road car designer, Gordon Murray thrashed everyone else's fuel/electricity efficiency with his prototype T.27 three seater car http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/pr...7-unveiled.php. I am desperately hoping he can get it to mass production so that I can get one before my Beat dies - not sure when either of those dates will be.

Also, if you need electric performance car building advice, there are many universities building electric racing cars at Formula Student: http://www.formulastudent.com/

With reference to "burning rubber" the key issue here is torque not power. I understand electric motors generate maximum torque at zero rpm so it should step off the line pretty fast. It would appear that the Smart Fortwo is now available with electric power in parts of America. Clearly time will tell as to whether it will be sold in the UK and on what terms, however this does open up the possibility in the longer term of getting a complete "Kit" of bits from a write off.

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Originally Posted by LawrenceHarding

With reference to "burning rubber" the key issue here is torque not power. I understand electric motors generate maximum torque at zero rpm so it should step off the line pretty fast. It would appear that the Smart Fortwo is now available with electric power in parts of America. Clearly time will tell as to whether it will be sold in the UK and on what terms, however this does open up the possibility in the longer term of getting a complete "Kit" of bits from a write off.

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Actually it varies from motor to motor; the thing about electric motors is that they can generate torque from a standstill so you don't need a clutch to start moving. They also tend to have a very flat torque curve so you don't need different gears.

Also, remeber that while torque is what creates accelleration, the drivetrain can be geared up or down to improve torque (but at the expense of a shortened gear ratio) hence why horsepower (which is just torque x rpms) is really a better indicator of power. The reason high torque figures are 'good' s that they mean peak horsepower occurs lower down the rpm range which makes the car more drivable. It also generally implies a better 'torque-curve' (i.e a wider 'powerband') which means you get maximum torque for longer.

You're right though that electric motors are great off the line, although part of that is down to traction control. Also with regards to getting kit from the fortwo, I always thought the Nissan Leaf looked like a good starting point but I don't know if you can get hold of a battery pack without owning one.

Alos, Bruce, I'm on the formula student team at uni and we're building an EV (what I was talking about earlier).

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Originally Posted by Ending Credits

I don't really understand the 10KW part of the battery pack. Do you mean 10KWh? Also, what is the expected final kerb weight? I'm guessing if you have a 500kg shell with 50kg for the motor you might have 150kg of batteries (although that's some 20KWh and possibly £7, 000).

Edit: By my calcs you have 10kWh with those batteries so I'm assuming it will be around 75kg. How much did they cost?

What efficiency is the motor? If you can gain 10% efficiency you save 10% on batteries which saves you 3% on weight which saves you an extra 1% on batteries... We were looking at a 50kW YASA brushless motor which peaks at 92% but then it's £10,000!

I will have to read more when I get home as we (Uni team) are building a 200kg EV racecar.

Also, I see you have a Legnum VR4; I'm hoping to pick up a Galant VR4 next year!

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Hi There Ending Credits

It sounds like you know more about this than me, I am not actually building the car myself but funding the build with the advice of a very good mechanic and a local EV specialist, the only part I have built is the 10-15Kw charger from EMW as this was an electronics kit which I am capable of handling, although it is High Voltage/High Current which is also new for me, basically when I started this project around a year ago I was a complete novice and would not consider myself much more than that now other than what I have learnt about how to build an EV over the last year, and most of that is advice I could recount but is not additional skills I have learnt other than project management and HV power electronics construction.

But here goes with what I know, yes it AFAIK a 10KWh pack, the Soliton Jr is a 180kw and a perfect match for the Kostov K9 motor (9 inch 220V), standard efficiency rates for a DC series wound is around 85%.

I was originally looking at the Agni motors (Cedric Lynch Motors) as they are a British designed motor manufactured in India and give a much better 93% efficiency, however they are not really suited to cars (yet) in fact my EV specialist friend Steve works for Agni and is in the process of developing a brush less version of the Agni which should be capable of an in car application, The brushed Agni's have been used successfully to win races at the electric TT in the isle of man, but in a racy application you do end up replacing brushes regularly.

so these did not suit my application as I specified sporty and reliable so I did not want to be replacing brushes regularly.

to answer your other questions the initial curb weight if the ICE'd Honda Beat is 760Kg according to Wikipedia (same as a Nissan Micra) and I understand that this is measured with a "Standard" adult male in the drivers seat.

I have not yet weighed the car but as soon as it is moving (very soon I hope) I will be taking it down the local scrap yard to get it weighed, I am guessing it will be lighter than it was because I have stood next to the car with all the parts fitted (as it is now) excluding some welders cable and an additional 12V battery for the in car electronics (this one will be lithium Iron Polymer a heavier battery type that the Lithium polymer but much lighter than lead acid, 4 cells in a block to give the required current and it is almost exactly the same size as the original mini lead acid battery) and I was able to roll the car back and forth easily with Brent my mechanic with literally no effort at all in fact I was stunned at how light it was I could easily push the whole car in forth gear on my own with no real effort at all, easier that pushing an old mini in my opinion as I have done a few times in the past ;-) so I am fairly confident that with me in the drivers seat it should come in at less than 760Kg (nearer 500kg I hope)

Which uni are you working for or studying at, I work at Sussex University in Brighton in the UK as a technical engineer, the car is just my crazed eco project ;-)

and yes the VR4 is a fantastic car (I love it) however be prepared to remortgage your house to pay the petrol bill as if you drive like I want to then you will get 6 miles to the gallon "SIX!" now that is what I call burning the planet and is exactly why I am trying to build an electric rocket ship, so I can have my speed freak cake and eat it ;-)

choosing the motor/controller/batteries is by far the hardest part as it is very subjective depending on your requirements and budget, the Agni's are great for efficiency (93%) a lot cheaper than your 50KW YASA but in a race application would need regular servicing after every single race.

AFAIK AC motors are better at prolonged race applications (ralley's etc) and offer Regen (although this is a bit of a misnomer when you look at the energy savings there are much easier/cheaper ways to save more energy, reducing weight for example) AC motors are expensive and the controllers are extortionate, way beyond my budget.

DC series wound is by far the easiest/cheapest way to go albeit at a mere 85% efficiency, however compared to the best Internal combustion engines out there which give around 23% efficiency I am happy with this.

If you are into Drag racing, speed over a very short distance, than fit 2 DC series wound motors and 2 controllers as in the "Black Current" race winning VW Beetle.

After much discussion with my EV friend I understand that the perfect motor for an EV might well be a permanent magnet motor however AFAIK there are not many (if any) available or appropriate for the EV market and the controllers don't really exist for Automotive applications as yet (watch this space the EV market is advancing very rapidly at present).

I am of the understanding that the Batteries I have (LIPOS, not LIFEPOS) are the best you can get for racy applications (High C rating) which AFAIK means you can dump the current out of them very quickly without destroying them and although LIFEPOS are nearly as good they are considerably heavier.

I could have over volt'd the Kostov K9 motor to 270V rather than the "nominal" 220V which would have given me better top speed and acceleration however I would have needed more banks of batteries and as the car is already 3 times over torqued I though the better of this idea (might use this on the RX8 conversion I am planning rather than going for a larger motor)

Good luck with the EV project, do you have a blog/website I can follow, are you on the diyelectriccar forum (you should be if your not already)

Thanks for listening

Graham

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Originally Posted by Bruce

Wow Graham, you crazy fool/genius. I like your style. Not sure this'll save you money, but it sounds like an awful lot of fun. Keep us all up to date.

When you're done, maybe consider entering it in the Future Car Challenge Eco-Rally? http://www.futurecarchallenge.com/ Though this year's event has been cancelled. In 2011, McLaren F1 road car designer, Gordon Murray thrashed everyone else's fuel/electricity efficiency with his prototype T.27 three seater car http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/pr...7-unveiled.php. I am desperately hoping he can get it to mass production so that I can get one before my Beat dies - not sure when either of those dates will be.

Also, if you need electric performance car building advice, there are many universities building electric racing cars at Formula Student: http://www.formulastudent.com/

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Hi Bruce

Genius NOT!, Crazy Fool Very probably ;-)

A lot of fun, I sincerely hope so as so far it has just been a lot of stress getting it built, Work out your budget then double it, work out the time schedule then treble it! remortgage the house and get the wife/partner involved or be prepared to loose them all ;-)

Thanks for the links I was planning on going for the WAVE race next year although it look like I need more batteries to qualify! I will check out these others as well.

Graham

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Originally Posted by LawrenceHarding

With reference to "burning rubber" the key issue here is torque not power. I understand electric motors generate maximum torque at zero rpm so it should step off the line pretty fast. It would appear that the Smart Fortwo is now available with electric power in parts of America. Clearly time will tell as to whether it will be sold in the UK and on what terms, however this does open up the possibility in the longer term of getting a complete "Kit" of bits from a write off.

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Hi LawrenceHarding

Burning rubber should not be a problem in the "Electro Beat" as I had to retain the gearbox much to my initial dismay, however it does help with reverse, boosts my top speed in 5th (slightly) and will burn rubber easily in 1st, however I had better be careful not to blow the transmission as it is 3 times over specification! easy does it ;-) drifting should be fun though, RWD mid "motor" drifttastic ;-) I am guessing it should be around 150BHP equivalent however I understand that EV's are measured in HP not BHP, not sure I get this at the mo but it will all come eventually (I hope) AFAIK Voltage is equivalent to speed, current is equivalent to torque.

I have heard of the EV smart for 2 but not seen one as yet, EV's need to be exiting to get peoples interest, the Leaf/ZE/IMIEV are just not doing it for me, the Tesla however does, but the price does not :-(

Thanks for listening

Graham (Crazy Fool)