# EV Dodge 2500 Van???



## madderscience (Jun 28, 2008)

Hi tcr1016-

All aspects of performance (range, speed, acceleration) will of course depend on the components you select, which will depend on your budget. Not too many of us backyard converters are converting large vans and trucks simply because it takes a lot more motor, battery, and controller to get useful range and decent performance and that in turn costs more money. Larger vehicles are of course heavier, meaning it takes proportionally more energy to accelerate to a given speed, and proportionally more energy to climb a hill. But also, rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag are considerably greater factors in a larger vehicle.

If cost were no object, here is a setup that might work and would probably give 40 miles or so of range in mixed driving (some freeway, some around town): 

one string of 156V of 200AH lithiums, a warp 11" motor and a logisystems 1000A controller. I'd recommend the zilla 1K or 2K controller first but they are currently out of production.

One advantage of a van: for even more $$$ (and you are already way up there) add a second string of lithiums and you will have pretty good range. Lots of room for batteries there.

Note that a 200AH, 156v lithium battery, an 8" motor and the same controller in a geo metro or a small sports car would give around 100 miles of range (at least) and pretty darn good performance. 

I encourage you to spend lots of time in the wiki section, lots of excellent theoretical information and group experience there to draw from.

This is probably your best precedent as far as existing EV vans go. A few hundred of these vans were made back in the 1990's. This one has about 2000lbs of flooded nicads for the battery, but I guess they were lead acid originally.

http://www.evalbum.com/1102

Good Luck.


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## ElectriCar (Jun 15, 2008)

I want to do the same but for a work van, a Ford E150 to do jobs around town but 40 miles and I'd be pushing on many days. I suspect my conversion will have to wait until battery or capacitor storage is much cheaper. 

My S10 has a 33kw pack and I think I'll get about 50-60 miles on warm days doing city driving. *The pack weighs 1500 lbs,* US Battery 2200's. You could imagine the weight needed in that van using lead.


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## tcr1016 (Dec 23, 2008)

I think I will wait a year or 2, and see if the prices go down.


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