3E - Ecologic, Economic, Electric; electric Honda HR-V in exhibition

I had 2 busy weeks lately: first - preparation for showing the car on exhibition BaltTechnika 2010, second - participation in exhibition itself. My friend Marius, professional designer, has prepared the design for the car and materials for exhibition. During that the new name for this car has developed - 3E - Ecologic, Economic, Electric which has become a logo of this car. So my working project name "HR-EV" is now 3E.
New web site has started http://www.emobilis.lt/ for the car and activity which is just basic info about the car and the controller for it which is named EVMS - Electric Vehicle Management System. This is the name for the development the management system which previously called BCMS (until I included the motor controller in it as well). Info in lithuanian was put first.
The exhibition was quite successful with a lot of attention from visitors and media. This might inspire further development of the product or some more EV conversions in our country.
Here are some photos from Exhibition.

Some more photos of the car outside:

The photos of components arrangement inside:

And here are some pictures of EVMS (Controller, BMS, safety systems in one) touchscreen display which is implemented on Windows mobile device Ipaq hx4700.
The display graphical user interface software is flexible so it can be arranged in many different pages with different indicators on each page showing the parameters sent from main controller module. The layout, indicators, colours, graphics can be adjusted to liking and match the interior of the car.
Here is the Main page showing battery voltage, current, power, energy, momentary and average consumption, distance traveled today and estimated distance left.

Here is the battery cells status screen showing voltage, temperature and balancing voltage of each cell plus average and total voltage of all cells.

Here is the consumption screen showing battery charge, estimated distance left, distance, energy consumption of this trip and today plus average and momentary consumption.

Here is the screen voltages. It shows voltage, current and power of main battery, motor and 12V battery plus position of accelerator pedal at the bottom.

This Charging screen shows charging stage. It shows voltage, current and power set for charger and actual. It also shows cells minimum, average and maximum voltages. Two buttons at the bottom allow you to select the charging rate: slow for 220V/10A socket and fast for 220V/16A socket.

Here is Temperatures screen which shows temperatures of controller (IGBTs power stage), motor, battery minimum and maximum, interior and exterior.

And lastly the main menu which allows to select you the information page you want. The time on stock car clock is wrong as I forgot to set it right :). Note the small card at bottom left? That is the SD card which carries the screen configuration and recorded parameters log files. It records the files constantly producing one file per day.

Here is a short movie of display in action:

BCMS and Battery Boxes

I caught some nasty flu on Thursday and needed to sit at home during almost whole weekend. Luckily wife with baby were out during it - visiting parents, so they were safe. Once I was feeling better I resumed some works on electronics and programming. I sent an order for battery module 45 PCBs. I expect to have them on Friday.

I've started programming the PDA graphical user interface. I'll use IPAQ or similar PDA with PocketPC 2003 system which will be mounted in the dashboard and give all information about car, batteries, temperatures, etc. For starters I just made it read the serial output sentences which are generated by BCMS. The protocol is NMEA which is widely used in GPS devices. I've created some custom sentence names which are used in my BCMS. The idea is that I'll have all parameters information along with GPS position of the car which will help car performance analysis after. Below is PDA emulator's program's simple screen which reads the data from serial port and displays in simple text fields. The parameters displayed are actually measured by BCMS.

When I got better on Sunday afternoon I went to garage and made a short session working on battery boxes. I welded the top mounting flange with one hole for initial mounting of the box. I also welded a M8 bolt part at the botom of the box where the batteries are being put. This bolt will be used to secure and press the batteries with V-shaped frame shown below. This will prevent any possible swelling of the cells.

Next will be a lot of grinding of the boxes to remove excess metal from the welds and improve aesthetic view. Nasty part will be cleaning the welds in inner corners of the boxes as it is not yet done properly. Then I will put stainless steel sheet into the boxes walls and they will be almost finished. Almost... There will be plastic retainer bars inside to stop cells from bouncing in the box. And also some plastic or maybe metal sheet cover on top of the boxes with openings at both ends to allow access for boxes interconnections.