Converting ICE Car to Plug-In Electric

[CycloWizard]

I have a 1990 Acura Integra LS with about 210,000 miles on it. I've done all of the maintenace on it myself since I bought it 10 years ago and know just about every part of it by now. I also know that its days are numbered simply due to engine wear at this point since I haven't always been able to do all of the preventative maintenance as quickly as I would have liked. In any case, it's worth less than my shirt at this point and I'll be graduating soon (hopefully) and will be able to afford a new car.

I recently had the idea that after I buy a new(er) car, I could try to convert this old one into a purely electric car. I built a small-scale hydrogen fuel cell car using a plug-in electrolysis unit about five or six years ago (Google "Unpossible Contraption" if you're interested). However, that car used a commercially-available fuel cell and charger, so all I had to do was connect it to a motor and build the chassis. That, and the car only weighed about a kilo and never had to travel more than 100 feet (though it could go much further on a full charge), so it didn't take much juice to move it. The main costs would be from the fuel cell membrane (due to platinum catalysts), batteries, charging circuits, and the motor.

I was wondering if you guys thought that retrofitting an ICE car to run with a fuel cell would be a feasible project and, perhaps more importantly, how much should I look to spend? Would it even be legal to drive this thing around on the roads? Just some questions I thought I would ask before I sat down and calculated how much hydrogen I might actually need to make this thing go any useful distance.

 

[Mark R]

My understanding is that fuel cells are far too expensive for powering a car. A couple of recent articles suggest that a PEM fuel cell with sufficient power for a automobile (15 kW) would be about $250,000 - and if you just wanted a one off, perhaps over $1 million.

Opinions on which way the cost is going seem to be mixed - the car manufacturers seem to suggest that prices are soon to crash, but companies who make the fuel cells have hinted that this may not be the case. Indeed, some insiders are quoted as saying that current membrane technologies will never be suitable for cars, and a whole paradigm shift in fuel cell technology will be required.

You may be better off looking at full battery electric, if you can deal with the weight issues, then many people run lead-acid battery conversions, which can be built for under $8,000.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Mark R
My understanding is that fuel cells are far too expensive for powering a car. A couple of recent articles suggest that a PEM fuel cell with sufficient power for a automobile (15 kW) would be about $250,000 - and if you just wanted a one off, perhaps over $1 million.

Opinions on which way the cost is going seem to be mixed - the car manufacturers seem to suggest that prices are soon to crash, but companies who make the fuel cells have hinted that this may not be the case. Indeed, some insiders are quoted as saying that current membrane technologies will never be suitable for cars, and a whole paradigm shift in fuel cell technology will be required.

You may be better off looking at full battery electric, if you can deal with the weight issues, then many people run lead-acid battery conversions, which can be built for under $8,000.

If I could find a source of platinum, I could actually synthesize my own membrane and get my fuel cell that way (since I have a pretty extensive background in polymers 😛).

 

[wirelessenabled]

Here is the answer Super Capacitor!

Of course it seems to defy physics as I see it. Car drives 500 miles after a 5 minute charge. Say the car gets the equivalent of 50 mpg.

That means 500 mi traveled/50mpg=10 gal gasoline @ 124,000 BTU/gal= 1,240,000 BTU.

Say we cut that in half for the difference in efficiency between internal combustion engines (roughly 40%) and electric motors (roughly 80%) giving us 620,000 BTU of electric motor work.

Converting to watts that is 181.7 KWh used. Somehow this 181.7 KWh is going to be stored in the capacitor in 5 minutes. That gives us a charging station capable of delivering 12*181,000 Watts = 2,172,000 Watts for 5 minutes.

Wow! I'd like to see that cable!

What am I missing here?

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: wirelessenabled
Here is the answer Super Capacitor!

Of course it seems to defy physics as I see it. Car drives 500 miles after a 5 minute charge. Say the car gets the equivalent of 50 mpg.

That means 500 mi traveled/50mpg=10 gal gasoline @ 124,000 BTU/gal= 1,240,000 BTU.

Say we cut that in half for the difference in efficiency between internal combustion engines (roughly 40%) and electric motors (roughly 80%) giving us 620,000 BTU of electric motor work.

Converting to watts that is 181.7 KWh used. Somehow this 181.7 KWh is going to be stored in the capacitor in 5 minutes. That gives us a charging station capable of delivering 12*181,000 Watts = 2,172,000 Watts for 5 minutes.

Wow! I'd like to see that cable!

What am I missing here?

It doesn't seem like they've considered that aspect of the design yet. 😛 It would be interesting to see their patents. I don't know much about capacitor construction, but I do know quite a bit about materials... Maybe they'll hire me if/when I finally graduate.

 

[Cogman]

Here is the answer Super Capacitor!

Of course it seems to defy physics as I see it. Car drives 500 miles after a 5 minute charge. Say the car gets the equivalent of 50 mpg.

That means 500 mi traveled/50mpg=10 gal gasoline @ 124,000 BTU/gal= 1,240,000 BTU.

Say we cut that in half for the difference in efficiency between internal combustion engines (roughly 40%) and electric motors (roughly 80%) giving us 620,000 BTU of electric motor work.

Converting to watts that is 181.7 KWh used. Somehow this 181.7 KWh is going to be stored in the capacitor in 5 minutes. That gives us a charging station capable of delivering 12*181,000 Watts = 2,172,000 Watts for 5 minutes.

Wow! I'd like to see that cable!

What am I missing here?

From the WIKI!

While it is a dream of gasoline powered vehicles to reach 75 or 100 mpg (3L/100 km), electric vehicles naturally reach the equivalent of 200 mpg (1.5 L/100km) with their typical cost of two to four cents per mile. In contrast, gasoline-powered ICEVs currently cost about four to six times as much.[11] The total cost of ownership for modern BEVs depends primarily on the cost of the batteries,[12] the type and capacity of which determine several factors such as travel range, top speed, battery lifetime and recharging time; several trade-offs exist.

without doing any of the math myself (and using only your figures.) that would mean that you underestimated the gas milage by about 4 times. though I do tend to agree the numbers they have are off, I think it is more like 30 mins charge time rather then 5.

 

[wirelessenabled]

Originally posted by: Cogman

Here is the answer Super Capacitor!

Of course it seems to defy physics as I see it. Car drives 500 miles after a 5 minute charge. Say the car gets the equivalent of 50 mpg.

That means 500 mi traveled/50mpg=10 gal gasoline @ 124,000 BTU/gal= 1,240,000 BTU.

Say we cut that in half for the difference in efficiency between internal combustion engines (roughly 40%) and electric motors (roughly 80%) giving us 620,000 BTU of electric motor work.

Converting to watts that is 181.7 KWh used. Somehow this 181.7 KWh is going to be stored in the capacitor in 5 minutes. That gives us a charging station capable of delivering 12*181,000 Watts = 2,172,000 Watts for 5 minutes.

Wow! I'd like to see that cable!

What am I missing here?

From the WIKI!

While it is a dream of gasoline powered vehicles to reach 75 or 100 mpg (3L/100 km), electric vehicles naturally reach the equivalent of 200 mpg (1.5 L/100km) with their typical cost of two to four cents per mile. In contrast, gasoline-powered ICEVs currently cost about four to six times as much.[11] The total cost of ownership for modern BEVs depends primarily on the cost of the batteries,[12] the type and capacity of which determine several factors such as travel range, top speed, battery lifetime and recharging time; several trade-offs exist.

without doing any of the math myself (and using only your figures.) that would mean that you underestimated the gas milage by about 4 times. though I do tend to agree the numbers they have are off, I think it is more like 30 mins charge time rather then 5.

My scenario above puts the electric car at 100 mpg let's convert to 200 mpg.

So then lets go 500 miles at 200 mpg = 2.5 gallons gasoline equivalent. 2.5 @ 124,000 BTU/gallon is 310,000 BTU giving us 90.1 KWh. Still makes it over 1,000,000 watts for 5 minutes. Sure ain't gonna happen at house voltages.

I know! Up the charger voltage to 500,000 volts and then you could do it with a tiny wire albiet a very well insulated tiny wire.😀

Heck, brown out the whole neighborhood.:shocked:

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Using wiki conversion factors (125,000 BTU per US gal, 1.0545 kJ per BTU and 3.6 MJ per KWh-1)

A car using 1.5L/100km would expend ~418 MJ or 116kWh on a 500 mile journey.

Edit: Additional info 😀

The actual patent

"The cycle time to fully charge a 52 kWh EESU would be in the range of 4 to 6 minutes with sufficient cooling of the power cables and connections."

Seems to be a more theoretical idea of how quickly you could charge it.

The voltage of the charger is massive - 3.5kV

Charging 52kWh in 5mins = (52kWh*60/5) = 624 kW
P=IV
I= 624000/3500 = 178 Amps (still seems massive and not your typical household supply)

The patent also only refers to the possibility of delivering the equivalent of a typical tank of gas, so how many miles do you get out of your tank? I don't get anywhere near 500.

It assumes a car weighing 2500 lbs with driver, 21 square feet fA, 0.35 Cd and front wheel drive so transmission losses are 15% of the flywheel power.

SPEED (MPH) FLYWHEEL POWER REQUIRED (BHP)
60............................... 19

An efficient 20kW engine and power train could drive a small vehicle at 60 mph. In fact 19 BHP equates to 14 odd kW.
A constant drain of 14 kW would allow you to drive for 3h40 mins (220 miles) before running out of juice which isn't too bad (and isn't too much less than the range of my old car, which had a tiny tank). Of course you could have two of the supercapacitors in a vehicle, although it would change the charging times and other variables.

Hope that is understandable 8) (and I haven't made any mistakes!)

Seems to me that a journo has got hold of the article and not paid too much attention to the facts.

 

[natto fire]

Not sure how much this can help, but I know Second generation Integras top to bottom, and have a Helm's manual in PDF form, which could really come in handy for a project like this.

I am assuming you are going to be scrapping the B18A engine and revising the entire powertrain?

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: Captain Howdy
Not sure how much this can help, but I know Second generation Integras top to bottom, and have a Helm's manual in PDF form, which could really come in handy for a project like this.

Yes, that would be very handy. I have the Chilton and Haynes manuals already, but they aren't as forthcoming with the intricacies.

I am assuming you are going to be scrapping the B18A engine and revising the entire powertrain?

Correct. Probably just about everything under the hood would be removed. I've done it once before, except that before it was one part at a time. It would be much easier to remove it all at once. 😛 As of right now, I don't have a garage to do this in. I'm just looking at feasibility at this point. If I think I can do it, I'll probably get started when I finish up my dissertation and get a real job/house, which would be December or May.

 

[XMan]

We'll need pics.

 

[CycloWizard]

Originally posted by: XMan
We'll need pics.

Of course. I'll set up my old computer as a web server with a website dedicated to the project. Then you can all see how jury-rigged my car is and marvel that it's continued running for the last 35,000 miles with half of the engine sitting in the trunk and the remainder being held in place with JB Weld. 😛