How do I do an electric vehicle conversion without using the transmission?
I would like to convert my 99 Toyota Tacoma 2wd to battery electric.
Every conversion kit that I've come across involves bolting an electric motor to the existing transmission. I would like to remove the transmission and mount the electric motor directly to the drive train.
I've heard this can be done successfully but there is little information available. Anyone have any experience or ideas on this?
I like your thinking -- I agree getting rid of the tranny is a win.
However, the folks on the EV List http://www.evdl.org/ have discussed this at great length, and from their experience I can tell you there are several ways to go about that, and all have compromises. The problem is, most single DC motors don't have the torque spread to both freeway cruise at 60 mph and also mountain-goat up really steep hills. You also need to figure out how to apply power in reverse.
#1 AC drive. This makes for a very complicated and expensive controller but a somewhat cheaper motor. AC can do *everything* - mountain goat, freeway cruise, reverse, regenerative brake. To buy a commercial motor/controller package you're looking at $8000 and up. Ouch.
#2. forget about freeway. Use a low final drive gearing that will climb you up the hills, and just don't go faster than 45/50/whatever.
#3. forget about hills. Use a tall final drive gearing that leaves you unable to mountain-goat.
#4. Oversize the DC motor. Put a 9" in a car you'd normally use a 7" motor in, or an 11" where you'd use a 9".
#5. TWO series-wound DC motors and switch them from 'series' to 'parallel'. Almost every railroad vehicle does it this way. Series for climbing hills, parallel for freeway. An alternative to "parallel" is "single motor", i.e. short around one motor, simpler switching but less power available.
#6 Separately Excited DC motor. The controller is somewhat more complicated and the motors are much harder to come by, you might have to take a series DC motor and pay a motor shop to rewind the fields for SepEx.
We still need to discuss "reverse". Without a transmission, you'll need to electrically reverse the DC motor. That is, reverse polarity of either the field or armature. For that, you'll need some physical switches. It's the same kind of switches you'll need to select series/parallel. It might be possible to implement all that, together, in a big drum switch of some kind, similar to a streetcar "K" controller.
All of this is going to require some engineering, especially to get the final-drive ratio right. That's one reason so many conversions use transmissions, makes everything simpler as you can just correct for gearing deficiencies by changing gears. That would be one hedge, keep the tranny temporarily until you figure out how to have the vehicle do everything you want in 4th (direct) gear, then dump the tranny.
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