# Planning 1994 Camaro conversion



## rillip3 (Jun 19, 2009)

You should probably start with the wiki. It has a lot of information on how to get started, basic components, etc.

The range is a bit high. Assuming 200 watt-hours (Wh) per mile (300 is a more typical estimation number, but this is a pretty light, aerodynamic sports car so I'm cutting that a bit), that's a 20,000 Wh pack. Assuming AGM or Litium, you increase by 20% for safe depth of discharge and 20% for Puekert, which leads to 28,800 wh. Assuming you run at 120v, that's 240 Ah batteries. Not impossible but pretty tough to get. If you push it up to 144v, you get 200 Ah batteries, which is more doable, but still quite large. I suspect that without a very large budget, you can't reasonably get this range on a DC conversion. 

If you were running AC, say at 330v, you only need 87 Ah batteries, which is pretty trivial (but you'll need 28 12V batteries to get to that voltage!). AC also tends to be more expensive. To get 330v in that vehicle you'd have to be talking about Lithium, which pushes the cost up more.

100 mi can be done, but the price will be quite high. If you were to cut it to say, 50 mi, then you're talking about a much easier, cheaper conversion. Keep in mind that most people don't drive more than 40 miles in a day around town, and you may find this limitation much less limiting than it sounds. Try checking your odometer out and see how much you're actually driving in a day before you start to sink money into the project.

I didn't see a ready made adapter for that particular year (I saw '82-'85), but these, or another similar vehicle, may have a ready-made adapter.


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## genturner (Aug 6, 2010)

if i cut the mileage to 50- 60 on a charge (40 with 20%) what kind of battery setup would you recommend?


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## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

genturner said:


> if i cut the mileage to 50- 60 on a charge (40 with 20%) what kind of battery setup would you recommend?


144V 100AH = 14.4kwh (250wh per mile usage = 57.6 miles (100% use)

100AH cells = 125$ 
http://currentevtech.com/Lithium-Batteries/Thundersky-c11/

3.2 V each cell so...45 cells in series = 144V

45 cells * 125$ = $5,625 (w/o cables, BMS, etc)


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## tinrobot (Aug 26, 2009)

250 Wh/mile seems pretty optimistic. A Camaro is not a very light car, curb weight is about 3500 pounds.

I'd figure it at 350Wh/mile. I'd also use bigger batteries, such as 160-200ah, because you'll pull a lot of amps to accelerate that big of a car. Bigger batteries will allow you to pull more amps without damaging the batteries (you don't want to pull more than 3x the ah capacity of the battery)


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## genturner (Aug 6, 2010)

im sure if im willing to spend that much while i am building. maybe after it all works and i drive it for a while ill get new batteries. if i use AGM 12v batteries how many would i need for the same mileage? im not good with electrical math. 

also i will be stripping camaro of everything but front seats and gauges and redoing body in fiberglass mold so weight shouldn't be a big problem. i have also seen kits that have motor with yolk for u joint (direct drive) and im not sure if thats an advantage over a transmission or not. (300+ lbs for my transmission)

also have a question. i do alot of car audio installs and i have seen multiple batteries hooked up a number of ways. 

Series increasing the voltage and paralell increasing the capacity. but i am not sure how these affect an ev. i only know amps and watts


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## rillip3 (Jun 19, 2009)

if you're running at 144v, divide by 12v and you get 12 batteries. The size of the batteries (amp hours) will determine the range. Bigger the the battery, larger weight/size, generally speaking. Connecting in parallel would give you more range but more weight. It would probably be better, given the size of these batteries, to get a larger amp hour battery. 

Just using my batteries as an example (not ideal for an EV, they're UPS batteries), they're 75 Ah batteries at 58lbs. An 150 Ah battery is only 78 lbs, so by increasing the weight by ~ 50% you increase the power by 100%, where as if you just put them in parallel, you have increased the power by 100% and the weight by 100%.


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## genturner (Aug 6, 2010)

i live on a military post and the speed limit on post is 25 so i am not worried about speed. if i had my whole bank of batteries (12, 12V) ran in parallel would that create enought volts to run my motor and controller 120V-180V. 

i dont know how parallel affects the volts but i want the vehicle to go farther rather than faster.


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## rillip3 (Jun 19, 2009)

genturner said:


> i live on a military post and the speed limit on post is 25 so i am not worried about speed. if i had my whole bank of batteries (12, 12V) ran in parallel would that create enought volts to run my motor and controller 120V-180V.
> 
> i dont know how parallel affects the volts but i want the vehicle to go farther rather than faster.



In series, you add the volts. In parallel, the volts stay the same as each battery. So if you hook up 12 12v batteries in parallel, you get a 12v battery.


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## genturner (Aug 6, 2010)

so if i was to make two battery banks, on series and one parallel i could conect the two in order to achieve more amp hours with the smae amount of volts needed to run the motor

bank 1 - (12) 12v batteries in series , 144 volts

connected with

bank 2 - (6) 12v batteries in parallel , 12v

Does this make sense / seem reasonable


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Not exactly. What you want to look at is total watt hours of the pack, not how the pack is configured. Say you have 12 100 amp hour 12 volt batteries in series, 144 volts x 100 amp hours = 14,400 watt hours. Take those same batteries in parallel, 12 volts x 1200 amp hours = 14,400 watt hours. You divide your total watt hours by how many watt hours per mile you think the vehicle might use, say 300, that gives you your potential range, 46.66 miles in this example. Now in the real world you wont run a motor on 12 volts, so the series setup for 144 volts makes more sense. So if you wanted more amp hours at 144 volts you'd either get larger amp hour batteries, or parallel two equal strings of cells to double the amp hours, 2 strings of 100 ah cells and 144 volts, for 200 ah capacity at 144 volts. Just realize that you're talking about a very heavy vehicle using that many lead batteries.


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