[clug] Canberra electric vehicles group - first contact

[Paul Wayper]

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On 02/02/10 10:01, jm wrote:
> Alot of that cost would be batteries which are coming down in price
> fast. Try
> 
> http://www.hobbyking.com/

I've been using http://www.evworks.com.au to look at part prices - they're in
WA but they ship across Australia and they're pretty good from what I've seen.
 A good example of their battery range is what I was looking at:

Thunder Sky LFP200AHA - $315.70
* 200 amp hours of capacity
* 363mm long, 230mm high, 55mm wide
* 3.2V nominal, 2.5V to 4.2V range
* 7kg

Let me know when Hobby King makes a battery pack that approaches 20Ah
capacity. :-)

I'm looking at buying 8-10 of those for the bike.  Other people have bought
20-30 of the smaller 40Ah batteries to fit in their frame - most batteries
cost a fixed $/Ah ratio so it makes little difference to the cost.

> I know a lot of RC guy who buy stuff from there. Be careful with your
> batteries as the number of charge-discharge cycles you can get from
> various manufacturers can vary greatly and the voltage-amperage
> characteristics can also vary a great deal even on batteries with the
> same supposed C rating. If your putting a large battery pack together
> you may which to purchase a small number of batteries first and test
> cycle them with a test load similar to the intended application (in some
> application you may only get 25 cycles on low quality batteries).
> 
> There's also a battery manufacturer out there who will make to order. No
> idea of the pricing and  the name escapes me, but if anyone is
> interested I can probably dig it up.

I also looked at the website of http://www.a123systems.com/ which makes high
power lithium batteries.  Looks interesting, I wonder what the costs are...

One thing that came up at the meeting was that there's a business opportunity
for someone on the east coast of Australia to set up as a supplier of EV
parts.  The big feeling was that the tricky bit was dealing with the long tail
of parts - batteries and motors are easy to get, but there are lot of
specialist controllers, gauges, safety equipment, connectors, and so forth
that fill little niches but don't sell quantities.  Still, I'm sure there's a
solution there with drop shipping and JIT supplies combined with ordering
judiciously.  There's people who will know the business logistics side of this
much better than I do.

Have fun,

Paul
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