Is there a way to link multiple car batteries together, to make an electric car?

Question

If I were to link 10 car batteries together (each 12 volts), would I be able to daisy chain them into a 120V battery pack, that could be recharged with a wall socket plug (running at 120V)? This is assuming I would have to remove the gas engine, to make room for the batteries.

Answer 1

car batteries are not suited for traction because of their basic design - car batteries are only used in short busts for the starter motor, then they are recharged.

Traction batteries need to give sustained power for long periods until almost flat then recharged.

lead-acid are relativly available and cheap, but have low power density to weight (ie they are heavy, the car probably weighed nearly a ton all up, but could still carry 4 adults happily).
in my old 205 conversion I had 10 marine batteries giving a range of 30 miles & top speed of 60mph (5 in the boot & 5 under bonnet giving a good weight distribution). recharge from any standard 250v socket (a lower voltage US 110v system would just take longer to charge) through an on-board charger.
Electric motors are much smaller, lower maintenance and more efficient than infernal combustion and have much better torque characteristics meaning simpler transmission (the tesla http://www.teslamotors.com, only has 7 moving parts in the motor/drive chain); but the simplest conversion is to connect onto the old gearbox.

Moder Li-ion batteries, similar to a laptop, will give a range >200miles at highway speeds, and recharge in 10 minutes
but the are expensive & hard to get hold of. http://www.altairnano.com/markets.html

The battery vehicle Society members sometimes join together to make a bulk purchase. http://www.batteryvehiclesociety.org.uk/wordpress/

you might also want to check the yahoo group for diy evs

But for the chance of driving an ev it is well worth persivering with your project; it is just simply a much more pleasent experience than infernal combustion.

Answer 2

You can daisy chain the connections, but you can't charge DC batteries with AC current without going through a converter/rectifier. I saw a car with an electric motor mounted under the hood in place of an engine, but I don't recall if it was adapted through the existing transmission. I think the batteries were connected partially in parallel and partially in series because the motor was 40 volts (something he found, I guess.) Seems like the problem will also be figuring out some rheostat to control the speed, because I think it would generate a pretty big spark if you have no way of starting the current/voltage off slow. I found lots of information years ago in the library, it'd be a fun project. I run around in a 10 square block area most of the time, so a vehicle like this would probably work for me. I found an old book (1910) on gas/steam & electric car maintenance. I found out that most shops had a constant running water distillation machine that worked on a small constant flame. The water was used to rejuvenate the batteries when they were periodically taken apart and cleaned out internally, the acid content was renewed/specific gravity adjusted, ect.. Seems electric vehicles were no big deal since steam/gas cars were just starting out too at that time. Keep trying different ideas...I also remembered, electric (1900's) buses had a controler which the driver used to vary the speed, just like in present day diesel powered trains (which run electric motors), it was called a "series/parallel switch"..no fancy electronics.

Answer 3

This is a challenging, but rewarding project. There are just a ton of links that will help you if you google converting to electric car. Type in the model of the car you want to convert at the same time and usually you'll get a specific conversion example.

A great site to start out on is:

http://www.evconvert.com/

This has past experiences of other conversions, and every month they convert a new car and get into some really good detail about the conversion they're doing.

evworld is also a good place to look, the site itself is about news, but it has links and references to electric car conversions.

Good luck

Answer 4

You could put the batteries in the trunk and run BIG cables up to a huge DC motor under the hood that connects to the transmission. Then you would have the figure out a way to vary the speed of the motor using some sort of solid state switching system.

Answer 5

Car batteries that are used in most cars are LEAD-ACID. They are VERY HEAVY.

Your car would weight several tons in order to have a good range. And you'd go through your batteries in about a year or two at most. Then you'd need to replace them.

But basically, an electric car "gas tank" is a bunch of better batteries tied together. It is much more complicated than that, but in a nutshell....

Answer 6

if u remove the fuel fed engine...............u will need an electric motor to be powered by all those batteries and a generator to recharge the batteries while driving and a cooling system to cool the motor cus it will b very hot as well as the batteries. Good idea ..........but solar is a better one and its already been invented no?

Answer 7

Most electric cars chain together laptop batteries as they are the most efficient for their weight.

Answer 8

Yes, but lead-acid batteries (car batteries) aren't very efficient for this application.

Answer 9

Yes it can be done, people have already done this. But car batteries are not really deep cycle and may not last that long for such use.

Answer 10

its alot more fun and useful to link three batteries together and use some welding leads to weld your jeep back together on a trail run through the mountains