Technocrat

Necessity is the Mother of Electric Car Conversions

zogger
Sun Jul 27 19:03:00 -0700 2008
Mechanics
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In the blockaded Gaza strip, a gallon of gasoline can go as high as $50 dollars, so any alternative to that is well received. A pair of Palestinian electrical engineers took their expertise and converted an older Peugeot to all electric drive, and now a "fill up" only costs them $1.50 in electricity. The car is working prototype now and they are lining up customers for similar conversions at a price of $2500, which has electric vehicle enthusiasts puzzled at how they can do it so cheaply.

Anan's and Mr. Khazendar's electric car is a 1994 Peugeot 205 without a standard gas engine. It's been converted to run on 34 standard lead-acid car batteries. At 15 horsepower, it travels at speeds of up to 60 m.p.h., and produces no emissions. "In Gaza [a 25-mile-long, 7.5-mile-wide strip], it is very sufficient," Anan says. ed.z.: If it is cheap and works, why not? 50 bucks a gallon is a heckuva motivator! In that small of an area, no long distance cruising is required. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to work. I remember seeing a few customized electric conversions way back in the 70s, coincidently enough with the article, they used standardized conversions built with Renault Le Car chassis. They seemed to work ok, I know they could do minimum highway speed as well, saw then do that. They were made and sold under the "lectric leopard" brand name. A rundown of oil prices probably doomed the company though, they phased out or something. I think they just used flooded lead acid batteries as well, but I don't know (don't remember is more like it) that much more about them other than I'd see them out and about. let me check..., ya, you can google it, enough links to choose from to find specs and pictures and guys who have restored old models they found.

Necessity is the Mother of Electric Car Conversions
Richard Sexton
Mon Jul 28 06:10:38 -0700 2008
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It uses 34 batteries? Standard golf cart 6V deep cycles flooded batteries are $100 each. That'd be $3400 just for batteries, how are they doing this for $1500. They got some cousin in Isreal than "can get them wholesale" or somegthing?

Necessity is the Mother of Electric Car Conversions
mrjk
Mon Jul 28 07:13:29 -0700 2008
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I'd guess they are using used old lead acid car batteries. They'll work and for far less cash. All the people with old cars and no cash for gas might sell their batteries.

Necessity is the Mother of Electric Car Conversions
Richard Sexton
Tue Jul 29 07:56:47 -0700 2008
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In my experience there's two kinds of car batteries. Ones that actually work, and "old" ones. I have a few "old" ones. They aint good for much (shorted plates). So I dunno...

make do is can do

zogger
Mon Jul 28 10:01:03 -0700 2008
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20 buck rebuilt or used, something like that. That's the point, they are blockaded, they *have* to make do without the normal everything working mindset of being able to get anything new easily. Look at the war there from their perspective, them versus super rich and high tech, so they got guys building kassams out of scrap metal that work, whereas in the west those would be six figure and up computer controlled whizzbangs. You just learn to compromise, improvise, cobjob better. Cuba, still has tons of 1950s cars running on the road, because that is all they had when the blockade started..

No idea what these electrical engineers are using for electric motors, maybe they rewind and rebuild something else. They are working with completely different parameters than those relatively rich Californians that they quote in the article.

I know even here the way I live, I am *astounded* at how much people pay for stuff and how much they make, what I read about here and on other boards and just looking at the economic articles, it is mind boggling to me how people can make that much and still be in semi dicey financial straits.

Ya, I guess I could go suit and tie up and run the hedge clippers all around and look spiffy and go get some office job in town so I could make enough to buy expensive organic food and rent an expensive town house or go in hock for decades again and commute all the time, and pay several dollars for a cup of coffee at a cafe and so on, but I just have a whopper garden instead and stuff my freezer with my own beef, eliminate the commute and a lot of going to the store. Stuff like that. I guess I could pay cash for a new riding lawnmower, but I took three junkers and a weekend and have a good enough running machine now, cut my whole big yard yesterday with it in fact. What's that, save a grand? I had 200 dollars even into the three junkers, the biggest deal was I still had a good enough running engine and a transaxle that still worked. I made a thousand bucks equity for working two part-days for myself instead of some office or retail gig when I had to make enough of their FRNs to go buy a 1200 dollar new riding lawnmower. Stuff like that. No more having to use mass quantities of propane for heat every winter, I now just work a few days extra with the chainsaw. 900 bucks to fill a propane tank, or a few days work for myself and ten bucks gas and oil? I don't need a 4 thou square foot home with a 30 year mortgage, I have a bedroom, living room, a a tv, a computer, radios, a bathroom, a kitchen, yada yada yada, your normal middle class stuff on the low end (and mostly used, to be fair), all of that in 680 square feet, plus I store stuff in a simple cheap shed. The carpeting here is really expensive high end stuff that I got paid to tear out of the rich folks house because they thought it was outgassing too much. Fine, tore it out, rolled it up, plastic wrapped it, saved it until I needed it, installed it here. Did a whole add on walk in closet with almost all used wood. Just everything along those lines, I always look to cobjob/recycle first if I can, no exceptions. I "leverage" sweat equity and yankee..I ..guess now confederate ingenuity to do what I need to do a lot of times, to a big degree over most folks I guess, that and just put up with having a different set of priorities and life expectations.

I "live" just as much outside as I do inside, so my inside existence doesn't need to be so elaborate, the outside is huge and beautiful.

I just keep trying to see where I can remove the bottleneck of being tied to their **&^ !! scam manipulated currency and markets, which I think are designed from scratch to be a ripoff and wealth transfer ponzi scheme run by the elite, plus it gets them to maintain full political control over their herds of serfs by keeping them dependent on them. me just hates that, I am not digging on their renamed feudal system. It is just wrongness.. I still need some access, haven't worked out how to have telephone or internet access for instance, and so on, but we are maybe half way independent now and push to shove could be 100% if there is any large scale systemic economic or social collapse, unlike 99.999% of the population who would be hungry refugees.

I grok most likely what those guys are doing, they can't even *get* exotic materials for chassis and computer controlled airflow wind tunnel testing and modern lightweight advanced batteries and so on, they just make do with what they got, which is old junkers and a box of wrenches and a torch most likely. Heck, you can take free for the hauling away "bad" car batteries now and open them up, test which cells still work, rewire them, glue the case lid back on and then do the math to get the voltage you are looking for by doing series connections. There's ways around things.

I remember reading after the balkans war, the axis of maximum profits kept knocking the serbs power grid down, locals took old car axles/ rear ends and car alternators and made crude hydro powered units they dropped in the nearest river or stream. Plus, it looked like junk from the air so they didn't keep getting destroyed from the air. Was it perfect, no, efficient, no, able to get a million dollars DOE funding for "studies", no, were VC investors intertested, no, but they got some electricity back without a lot of hassle, too. You just make do. More or less I am still in ye olden days back to the land, mother earth news sort of mindset, at least I returned to it after I finally just got disgusted enough with the "normal" alternative out there. Wasted a quarter century doing that, enough! I found out I really wasn't a yuppie! I tried man, I tried, it just didn't work out that well. hahahah back to my roots, the ones that work for me.

make do is can do
itwerx
Mon Jul 28 16:04:25 -0700 2008
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C'mon Zogger, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!  :)

*snort*

zogger
Tue Jul 29 10:26:34 -0700 2008
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What I feel like now is completely changing my mind again, getting a six figure job, having AC on top of AC. About ready to melt into a whimpering puddle here.....decisions decisions,,, ;)

make do is can do
zogger
Tue Jul 29 10:27:38 -0700 2008
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What I feel like now is completely changing my mind again, getting a six figure job, having AC on top of AC. About ready to melt into a whimpering puddle here.....decisions decisions,,, ;)

make do is can do
Simon
Tue Jul 29 16:12:34 -0700 2008
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Or they could stop firing home made rockets at their neighbours, and go back to buying cheap gas.

Although it has to be said the home made rockets don't work as well as the expensive ones, I still wouldn't want to be on the receiving end.

 

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