infinitenexus
infinitenexus Reader
12/11/19 10:17 a.m.

I know people have been making power walls for their homes out of old laptop battery cells.  Glad to see someone made an EV from it.  Added bonus, it's an E39!

https://www.designboom.com/technology/low-cost-diy-electric-car-made-from-recycled-parts-380-mile-range-06-17-2017/

mr2s2000elise
mr2s2000elise Dork
12/11/19 10:48 a.m.

Wow nice. Reminds me of the EV S5 that is all over Youtube.

kb58
kb58 SuperDork
12/11/19 11:10 a.m.

An old article that reminds me of how people will modify a car, then brag that it's somehow better than an unmodified car. I don't understand why they stripped out the interior, because they still would have beat the Tesla on range, but they ruined the comparison. Also, since they made a thing of recycling, wonder where the stripped-out interior went, to the landfill? And since they brought up price, apparently their time costs nothing. I get what they set out to do, I guess I just don't care for the over-the-top presentation.

 

 

 

STM317
STM317 UltraDork
12/11/19 12:08 p.m.

The same car currently holds the record for longest range on a single charge @999.5 miles!

Its a really interesting vehicle, but light on details. 133kwh battery, all recycled. That's all I could find in a quick search.

The  Builder did prison time for distributing free software to help people continue using their old laptops as long as possible and avoid creating more E waste.

STM317
STM317 UltraDork
12/11/19 12:10 p.m.
kb58 said:

An old article that reminds me of how people will modify a car, then brag that it's somehow better than an unmodified car. I don't understand why they stripped out the interior, because they still would have beat the Tesla on range, but they ruined the comparison. Also, since they made a thing of recycling, wonder where the stripped-out interior went, to the landfill? And since they brought up price, apparently their time costs nothing. I get what they set out to do, I guess I just don't care for the over-the-top presentation.

I don't know that they stripped the interior. They took possession of the car right before it was to be shredded, so perhaps the interior was already gone by then?

FuzzWuzzy
FuzzWuzzy HalfDork
12/11/19 12:43 p.m.

I can tell why they stripped the interior...:

 

It was the only way to get the amount of batteries they needed to fit in order to do the range that he was going for.

For the majority of cars, this kind of swap would be far from practical. Cool, but not practical.

dculberson
dculberson MegaDork
12/11/19 1:39 p.m.

In reply to kb58 :

They built a long-range electric two seater. The comparison wasn't ruined - it's comparing ultimate range not "range while able to transport four people."

infinitenexus
infinitenexus Reader
12/11/19 2:04 p.m.

Although that raises the question of where to put the batteries in a DIY conversion.  If I were to EV swap an E39, I would like to keep the back seats and trunk.  With them linking together a ton of small LI cells from laptop batteries, you would have the option of splitting the battery assemblies up, with a bit of wiring.  So perhaps some of the batteries could go in the old gas tank location, some could go in the engine compartment, but then I wonder how much range that would provide?    If it were even 100 miles that would be pretty awesome for a DIY swap.

morello159
morello159 Reader
12/11/19 2:47 p.m.

In reply to STM317 :

The company I work for would like to argue that one...

https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-proterra-range-record-20170919-story.html

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