(G) Electric Panda

What would it take to make a panda run on electricity? the obvious are:

A donor panda(selecta would be the easiest i assume)
A motor (very big one)
Lots of Batteries


But how would you "fuel" the panda? Plug in points or have a way of producing electricity on board?

You could use alternators on drive shafts (obviously with no engine there isnt a drive belt to power it. replace the sun roof with a solar panel. have miniture wind turbines stuck on the roof and bonnet.

Personally not a fan of plugging a car into a wall as this defys the point of not trunning on Petrol.

How do you know a car is more economical when running on electricity? obvoiusly you can't meausre MPG with elecricity. but cost aswell. We might have to imagine that electricity is "free". would the cost of a conversion be less than the running of a panda around town for 6months. (similar to converting to LPG really).

car electrics would be a trouble to, as i understand the selecta has all different types of sensors on the engine and ecu to control the box.

Jon or Petel your Selecta knowledge would be much appreciated here.

This is something i would be quite interested in trying if easy enough to do. so all help much appreciated.

Selecta is an idea, but the motor would always need to be running to run the gearbox pump so could drink the power.

Plug in and recharge is the only real viable way tbh.

Fiat did an electric Panda in the early 90s. Assuming you could get one it would be easier than building your own.

Quite so, unless you can overcome the laws of physics.

Running an electric motor from an alternator (mounted on the drive shaft or anywhere else) will never work because you need to put more energy into it than it can create.

Hydrogen fuel cells will be the way to go in a few years time.

Dave.

Except hydrogen isn't redily available. and to produce it you need power produced by fossil fuels. creating more polution that petrol/diesel. Most new top of the range cars produce such little co2 anyway now it will never change the whole market

Last auction:
http://cgi.ebay.de/Fiat-Panda-Elettr...item2304cc9dcf


Sutjeska

It's everywhere Craig. Water is H2O, two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. The atmospheric air has some too. Using a simple chemical process hydrogen can be extracted from various sources quite easily.

Just to add my bit to this,

Electric cars are definately more energy efficient than petrol, and even more so are hydrogen fuel cells. To produce the hydrogen, it is true large amounts of electricty are needed for electrolysis, but they can use power stations that run at typical efficiencies of 80-90% where as your petrol or diesel will be lucky to achieve 40-50% efficiency when converting the energy in fuel into movement.

Personally though, the electric car is completely impractical due to their limited range and performance. Does anyone know the range of these electric panda's? Cant seem to find any information of its performace on the net.

Would be cool to see a genuine Panda electra though, anyone going to import then?

Si

I remember there was one on eBay a few years back
all the batteries needed renewing as I remember - so it would have been an expensive scrapper to run!

We're a very long way off that from what I can see. You can only convert energy, and the creation of hydrogen is a very energy intensive proess. Without finding a green way to do it, its not viable.

Not such a long way off perhaps? I hope they're not anyway, I've got shares in a company called Ceres Power Holdings that make fuel cells.

Dave.

Detail from the eBay ad:

So it's a 2 seater (batteries in the rear seat area and load bay.. no luggage room). 13 HP 50 MPH flat out and approx 50 mile range. 0-30 MPH in 20 seconds!! 350 Kg of batteries (total kerb weight was over 1100Kg).

From another site, I found out the list price of a Panda Dance (903) in Germany was 11,000 DM. The Panda Elettra was 37,000 DM .

No wonder it was never a big seller....

Cheers,

Plug

I am interested in exploring an electric motor conversion for my 4x4 Sisley.

Has anyone done this with recent technology?

Ideally I'd like a DIY kit to install, but that might be too optimistic.

A TV programe electrified a classic 500..

Company was based in Mid Wales

Biggest issue is battery capacity.. limiting range

if you have the money, anything is possible. modern day brushless DC motors would make light work of pushing a panda.

i had a blue 4x4 sisley that sadly ended up being far too rusty to save. i never made it public but my plan with that would it have been a OK car was to make it a hybrid.

rotate the rear axle 90 degrease so it was pointing strait up and fix a large brushless DC motor to it. i already had the motor, i just needed to make a decent controller for it. then decide what voltage i was going to run it at. i had half built the controller deciding that i was going to run the system at 96v however it would have had the ability to handle 120v with ease.

the motor would have come up through the floor and have a box around it held in place with clips with a seal around its base to make it air and water tight while still allowing suspension travel.
i was going to use AGM cells with the future idea to upgrade to the block style Li-Po cells as the main power.

i had a lot of the stuff to do it as i work in a scrap yard. sadly most of the stuff was sold on when i found the car was too rusty to save.