I went to the SAE-A EV Engineering Open Night tonight for something to do.

EV Engineering ( http://evengineering.com.au/ ) is a company with six or so partners, like Bosch and Continental and so on, with the job of putting together an electric vehicle.

They chose the Commodore for the body because it required the least amount of work for a 'switch-in' battery system. I.e., you run out of juice, you roll into a servo and they swap your battery and you leave the flat one behind.

They took us for a 10min drive each. Vehicle was very good. Practically similar performance to the standard Commodore in most aspects.

Biggest expenses were the LiPo battery ($75k) and the motor ($25k) both of which were prototypes. Battery pack was put together by the engineering team, so that $75k only covered parts. Pretty expensive hobby.

Here's a pic from my mobs of the switch-in battery system in action:



It was quite effective. Slow as hell but they said there were ridiculous safety checks going on to make sure everything was correctly working and a real-life version would be a hell of a lot quicker once optimised.

Also the car was on a hoist because they were working in a concrete slab factory - IRL the battery stuff would be in a hole in the ground.

Overall, very interesting. The project ends this week and the seven EVs that were made all go to the partner companies who will put the EV in their normal fleet programs in order to get a lot of logged usage data. I specifically asked who owns the IP to that data and they said that the partner companies do, but there is a clause that the data is for Australia only - Bosch can't take it over to Germany, for example, without further negotiation.

Yeah, you're a dick :P

Also, the battery was a prototype. Anything mass produced would be cheaper obviously. Still, it's the biggest hurdle.

Performance wise the vehicle is fine. Cost and infrastructure are the bigger issues.

That's a rather anarchistic view on economic competition. Do you think the line workers should be denied government incentives to retrain while they're clawing out from underneath the rubble Vash?

seems a bit of a waste of time mucking about with dunnydores when Better Place has the Battery Swap system up and running with Renault sedans. Just import the cars and swap stations.

Fuzzy nuts.

sLaps I agree with you on the dunnydore.... it's not what I'd call an 'ideal' candidate, but it's a known platform locally, and I think Aussie's can wrangle with the best in the world when it comes to engineering feats like this.
(besides, if Holden backed said endeavours by sponsoring with a car (or subsidised car purchase) I'm pretty sure I'd take that on when an engine and 'fuel cell' cost 100k...)

On the Commodore thing... reminds me of the tag-line 'you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter'

I saw a EV Zero emission Ford Capri yesterday.

Interesting. Will check that out.

EV Engineering chose the Commodore due to space availability for a swap-in battery system. They specifically didn't want a small car (which is what everyone else is doing). They wanted to look at a performance vehicle and try to match the performance with an electric system.

Vash's comments just demonstrate how any money going into the automotive sector (biggest manufacturing sector in Australia) are seen as a 'bail-out' while money going into anything else is an 'investment'.

I was standing next to a guy yesterday when one of the engineers asked him, "So what line of engineering are you in?" and his reply was, "Well, you're probably going to put us out of business - we make fanbelts."

It'll probably be as successful as the ECOmmodore

a renault fluence is a french dunnydore

Pinky, I saw it driving around on Brisbane Streets.