| Owner | Russ Sciville | ||||||
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| Location | Leicester, England United Kingdom map | ||||||
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| Vehicle | 1998 Lotus Elise S1 Probably the best and lightest sports car on the road. Only 118bhp from the ICE produces 0-60 in 5 seconds. | ||||||
| Motor | Siemens Ford Ranger/Siemens 5133WS20 3-Phase AC For cost reasons I am using one of the ex Ford Ranger motors which I have modified for non oil lubricated use. | ||||||
| Controller | Siemens Simovert 6SV I was lucky to purchase a used Simovert from the ever helpful Evisol whom I would recommend to anyone unreservedly. | ||||||
| Batteries | 96 LiFePo4, 3.60 Volt, Lithium-Ion Changed my mind using Thunder-sky as I was not happy fitting potential incendiary devices in my car. Will soon receive the Hi-Power Lithium Iron which do not catch fire with abuse. | ||||||
| System Voltage | 340 Volts | ||||||
| Charger | Brusa NLG513-Sx The Brusa is an excellent software configurable charger and very compact. It also uses CAN networking which I propose to use with BMS. | ||||||
| Heater | Ceramic electric + coolant. I may not bother with boosting the heat I get from the coolant via the heater matrix. | ||||||
| DC/DC Converter | Siemens , part of the Simovert inverter | ||||||
| Instrumentation | Lotus at the moment. The inverter has a compatible tacho pulse output which works perfectly with the Lotus "Stack" instrumentation which is scaled up to 8,000 rpm. The speedo has a pickup on the rear wheel hub so that still works. | ||||||
| Top Speed | Not yet known but should be interesting. | ||||||
| Acceleration | Hope to be better than with IC engine. | ||||||
| Range | As far as possible (not yet known) but should be around 60 miles on 50ah cells. | ||||||
| EV Miles |
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| Seating Capacity | Just two slim lithe people (surprisingly like myself!) | ||||||
| Curb Weight | 1,800 Pounds (818 Kilograms) The Lotus is approx. 800Kg in standard form. I would expect it to be about 950Kg in EV form. | ||||||
| Tires | Original | ||||||
| Conversion Time | Started in October, it is now July and it is all finished and working but for batteries and a charger. It drives like a milk float on 140v of old UPS batteries but at least it moves! | ||||||
| Conversion Cost | Lots but less than it could have been. | ||||||
| Additional Features | I will be using the original gearbox for now but not the clutch. The Lotus for various reasons lends itself well to EV conversion. It is surprising how many areas there are for batteries, both at the rear and front. Being able to use the original instrumentation gives it the professional touch. | ||||||
| I cannot wait to put my car on the road now summer is here. It will be an ongoing project and I have many more ideas to prove. See this actual car when new on the front cover of the book "ELISE. REBIRTH OF THE TRUE LOTUS" by Alistair Clements. A brilliant book charting the development of the Elise from concept to reality. | |||||||
1998 Lotus Elise
“Ellie”
(under construction)
Last Updated 07-05-2008
Copyright © 1997-2008 by Mike Chancey