{"id":401,"date":"2010-07-12T09:19:17","date_gmt":"2010-07-12T13:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/djdan.hopto.org\/dan\/?p=401"},"modified":"2010-07-12T09:19:17","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T13:19:17","slug":"electric-vehicles-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.danjoannis.com\/?p=401","title":{"rendered":"Electric Vehicles, Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: I’ll say this before I dig too deep into the content of the blog. This morning I logged in to find that my WordPress password had been changed (MD5 decryptor couldn’t decrypt it unfortunately), and once I manually reset my password in the database, different parts of the dashboard were broken. I doubt the blog broke itself. So, to whatever bot or being did this:<\/p>\n

Every step you take, I’ll be watching you.
\nEvery single day.
\nEvery hack you make.
\nEvery script you change,
\nEvery code you break, I’ll be watching you.<\/p>\n

Oops, got carried away.<\/p>\n

During the last week or so I’ve been excessively interested in portable and quick “personal electric transportation”. Oh dear, I’ve gone an made an acronym in my first sentence… The idea is to use these small vehicles in areas with high pedestrian traffic, on trips where walking would take too long, and have a range that allowed for multiple such trips on a single charge. The most ideal form for such a vehicle that comes to mind is the scooter.<\/p>\n

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The scooter in the picture is a 100W “Firefly” scooter, purchased from Giant Tiger years ago for $100. It came stock with 2x 12V, 4.5Ah batteries hooked in series (24V), a 100W motor, and as far as my research has shown, a 150W controller. It has 125MM rubber tires, and a rear drum brake. In this photo, I have removed the plastic base\/cover, change the stock seat for a more comfortable bicycle seat, and in the large black bag, instead of having 2 batteries, there are 6. Total of 13.5Ah. Plenty of run time, and the controller can suck all the current it needs to get me going.<\/p>\n

In terms of performance, it is a bit limited. I would say I could get to about 15km\/h on this. Not terrible, but because the scooter makes so much road noise, it is slightly embarrassing to slowly crawl by the people who point and laugh. Now, if it went 25km\/h plus, that would be something else.<\/p>\n

And that is my goal. I’ve been researching different motors and controllers, and I have a few possibilities.<\/p>\n