jaywalk
New member
- Joined
- May 15, 2014
- Messages
- 87
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- 22
Here's a crazy Sunday thought. I see more and more electric vehicle conversions popping up and as we all do love our Pandas: Why not an e-Panda?
My train of thought goes as this: Take a Panda 4x4, remove the prop shaft, put a electric motor to the rear differential. Leave the front diff with petrol/diesel engine and everything else intact.
48V 200Ah of lithium cells with control circuit would come in at about 70 liters of volume and 100-110 kg. This gives us ~10kWh, enough to be useful around town even for all electric drive.
How would a Panda drive at city speeds with just rear-wheel drive? I have a hard time imagining this but lower speeds I can't see an issue.
Controlling the engines. The 4x4 now has two drivetrains. This can be a very advanced or very simple system. Anything from just using one engine at a time (a second throttle?) to something really clever and computer controlled. I put this as a later todo to solve.
My last remaining question mark is to get the car registered to be street legal after the conversion. There's an organisation dedicated to this in Sweden called SFRO. From all I can tell you can go from 0 to street legal and registered in a few months and 7000 SEK (~600 GBP).
My back of a napkin calculations:
A Panda 4x4. ~30k SEK (~2600 GBP)
Lithium cells with BMS < 40k SEK (~3500 GBP)
Electric motor... Haven't dug into this but depends on how fast we want to go in electric mode. Let'ss say ~1000 GBP fitted for the sake of the argument.
Charging, installation, misc. at least 1000 GBP more.
So it's not unfeasable to go for ~100000 SEK (~8650 GBP) all in all. Including the Panda. Not cheap in old car terms, but it'd net you a plugin-hybrid Panda 4x4 and is still less than a new Petrol 4x4!
Thoughts, comments? This is just an idea in the back of my head and not an actual project for the next year or two.
My train of thought goes as this: Take a Panda 4x4, remove the prop shaft, put a electric motor to the rear differential. Leave the front diff with petrol/diesel engine and everything else intact.
48V 200Ah of lithium cells with control circuit would come in at about 70 liters of volume and 100-110 kg. This gives us ~10kWh, enough to be useful around town even for all electric drive.
How would a Panda drive at city speeds with just rear-wheel drive? I have a hard time imagining this but lower speeds I can't see an issue.
Controlling the engines. The 4x4 now has two drivetrains. This can be a very advanced or very simple system. Anything from just using one engine at a time (a second throttle?) to something really clever and computer controlled. I put this as a later todo to solve.
My last remaining question mark is to get the car registered to be street legal after the conversion. There's an organisation dedicated to this in Sweden called SFRO. From all I can tell you can go from 0 to street legal and registered in a few months and 7000 SEK (~600 GBP).
My back of a napkin calculations:
A Panda 4x4. ~30k SEK (~2600 GBP)
Lithium cells with BMS < 40k SEK (~3500 GBP)
Electric motor... Haven't dug into this but depends on how fast we want to go in electric mode. Let'ss say ~1000 GBP fitted for the sake of the argument.
Charging, installation, misc. at least 1000 GBP more.
So it's not unfeasable to go for ~100000 SEK (~8650 GBP) all in all. Including the Panda. Not cheap in old car terms, but it'd net you a plugin-hybrid Panda 4x4 and is still less than a new Petrol 4x4!
Thoughts, comments? This is just an idea in the back of my head and not an actual project for the next year or two.