I am building an electric adult trike, I found a good website with all the parts needed to do this. I want to use a car battery, but I don't want to burn up any of my new parts.
The motor is 60 volt/1000 watts, the throttle/speed controller has an overcharge protector built in, and it calls for a 30 amp fuse. The two reasons why I want to go with a car battery is that the bike batteries and chargers are very expensive, and I'm hoping to get a farther range with the bigger battery. So I guess my questions are: Am I about to burn up my new motor with too much power going into it? And if not, will I get more range with the car battery? Thanks for any help given.
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Voltage Questions
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Posted 8 months ago # : | | -
A car battery is only 12V. Not sure what type of motor / controller you plan on using, but all our conversion kits run at 36V or 48V. If you run less than this, the motor won't even work due to a low voltage cutout. So that means you'd need 3 (or 4) car batteries wired in series to create 36V or 48V. If you run it at 60V (the spec of the motor you provided), that would be 5 car batteries! Obviously, this will be extremely heavy.
Car batteries won't burn up your motor (if you configure them to create the right amount of voltage), but they will be so heavy that it will be impossible to pedal the trike. Not sure about the AH (amp hour) ratings on a car battery, but I'm sure they're very high. This will give you a lot of range, but it will be severely impacted by the enormous amount of weight.
Most people wire up 12V SLA batteries like these:
http://www.eco-wheelz.com/catalog/werker-sla-battery-12v-12ah-p-188.php
They can be wired in series to make whatever voltage you need. You can even get higher capacity 20AH (or 30AH) cells if you want more range. But once again, they get very heavy.
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Posted 8 months ago # : | | -
Thanks for your help, this is my first time building an electric bike. Your advise just saved me a lot of wasted money. I'm sure I'll have more questions, thanks again, and I'll check out your prices on batteries and parts.
Posted 8 months ago # : | | -
Do you already have the motor, Bryan? You say you found a website with parts. That's different from actually having the parts. If you don't have anything yet, your options are open. I suppose a good question is how much money are you prepared to spend?
Regarding the battery. A car battery is typically a flooded lead-acid battery. The expensive bike batteries you were looking at were probably Lithium-ion (they could have been a few different chemistries). Although the Li-ion may seem expensive it is probably cheaper than lead-acid if you consider energy density (the amount of energy stored per unit mass) and cycle life (the number of times you can charge and discharge).
Anyway, read up. And forget about using lead-acid.
`~- Nehmo
Posted 8 months ago # : | | -
Do you already have the motor, Bryan? You say you found a website with parts. That's different from actually having the parts.
Yes it is different from actually having the parts (lol)
I bought a 60 volt 1000 watt motor, it came with a scooter sprocket, so I had to purchase a bicycle sprocket (to fit the bicycle chain). I also bought a throttle and speed controller. I need batteries, a trike, some toggle switches and some wire. And if everything works I'll put lights on it and sell it. And then build another one, and so on. Thanks for the battery advice.
Posted 8 months ago # : | |
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