Sunday, July 26, 2009

First Road Test



Our family had been waiting for this moment for almost a year. I was itching to take the e-Protege EV for a ride but the heavy rain was literally raining on my parade.

Late Sunday afternoon, the skies cleared and the roads dried up so I went on my first road test. It was a nice feeling even though I didn't go far. You can feel that the car had serious torque and I had to hold myself back on the throttle. I took each one of the kids for a separate ride around the block since the rear seat was removed temporarily. The kids enjoyed the ride while my wife watched us and recorded the event on video (to be posted shortly).

I checked all the cells one more time after the road test and they had all come back to 3.33 volts. The total pack voltage was 133 volts. Since all this is new to me, I am still trying to figure out the expected behavior of the batteries.

5 comments:

Dimitri said...

Great news Jim! Congratulations on your EV grin!

Your battery cells at 3.33V are perfectly normal. They stay at this voltage for almost entire discharge without load, and sag to under 3.0V under load, which is pefectly normal.

Few charge/discharge cycles will balance the pack and settle PakTrakr data. You can safely go for 20-30 miles runs to break in your pack and the motor, then you will increase the range to determine how far you can get.

Nick Drouin said...

Congrats Jim, to you and you family!

I can't wait to see it in action.

All the best for the next stages of the project, fine-tuning, registration, and of course: daily driving!

Cheers,

-Nick
www.evalbum.com/1890

Brian said...

Congrats! Glad to see it on the road.

Unknown said...

Congratulations and nice looking conversion!

Unknown said...

Congrats!
I've been watching this blog on and off for a while with great interest. I have a 99 protege I would love to convert, but alas I do not have the skills or time.

Fun to watch someone else go through it though!

All the best.