Mar 142014
 

Well, yesterday I received my new batteries from EVTV. They bought a bunch of packs from the bankruptcy of Better Place. Better Place was using packs similar to the Nissan Leaf for the Renault Fluence vehicles that they had for their network of fast charging stations in Israel. So Jack sold off these packs “as is” and I was able to purchase one before they sold out. He sold all 72 packs that he obtained in just 4 days. My pack arrived at the UPS freight center on Wednesday and they called me and I arranged to be there on Thursday morning. Since I do not own a truck, I just went over to Home Depot and rented their truck for $19/75 minutes. It worked out quite well and the pack is now sitting on my lift waiting for me to start opening it up to see what I got.

I still have not decided how I’m going to integrate this pack with the CALB cells that I already purchased for this project. I was hoping to purchase a second pack from EVTV if I liked what I saw and then just sell the CALB cells. But with the packs all gone, I’ll have to think of another plan. I’d really like a 50kWh pack so that I can drive to Los Banos to visit my customers. This way all my driving would be electric and the Prius would not be necessary. It is not going to be easy to combine this pack with the CALB’s because of the different voltages, so I may have to choose and then figure out what to do with the other one. Sounds like a second project is in order….but this one has extended to two years with all the delays from family and work matters.

Speaking of work, I got handed another big project in the last week of January that has taken me away from the Porsche project once again. I was making good progress in December and January even without the motor cradle that I had on order. Ironically it arrived the same day as I got the order for the new project at work. Startup on this project is April, so I should be able to get back to the Porsche in late April to resume work in earnest.

Once I start again with the new cradle, I can figure out the motor and gearbox mounting and then everything else goes around them.