# Solectria Force Questions



## Electric A1 (Oct 16, 2016)

Hello there folks! 
I've had my eye on an older Solectria Force for sale near me for a little while, and I've been considering picking it up to get it running. It's a 1993 2 door hatch model, and appears to be pretty much complete, minus batteries. My plan would be to swap in a lithium pack and give it at least 50mi of range (should be pretty easy on such a small car).

I've been trying to do a bit of research, and I've learned a fair bit about them, but I still have a lot of questions and there's not a whole lot of resources out there for these cars. I have seen mention of a Yahoo group, but since Yahoo groups no longer exists I can only hope they moved on to another platform...

One of the things I've noticed about this car in particular is that it has no selector in the center console like the other pictures of Solectria's I've seen (although there's not a whole lot of interior pictures floating around). Instead of the selector, there's just has a blank plate with a red switch that appears to say "heat". Also, the only instrumentation on the dash other than the speedometer, and it does not appear to have A/C or power steering, so I can only assume this is a "base model". 

I've also got questions about battery voltage. I think I read somewhere that they have a low voltage cutoff that can cause problems, so back in the Lead Sled days, people would up it from 12 batteries to 13. Is there an upper limit to the voltage this car can run? I've seen a few cheap lithium options that would push it to around 170-180 nominal, and I'm not sure if that could cause any damage to the electronics. 

Anyhow, if someone has some more info about these cars, or info about what happened to the old Yahoo group forum I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Alex


----------



## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

Electric A1 said:


> I've also got questions about battery voltage. I think I read somewhere that they have a low voltage cutoff that can cause problems, so back in the Lead Sled days, people would up it from 12 batteries to 13.


The Wikipedia page for the Force (not an authoritative source) lists the nominal pack voltage as 156 V, which would be 13 12-volt (nominal) lead-acid batteries.


----------

