Do you want an electric A2?

Although the subsidies are gone, panel/system prices are much cheaper now. Next year VW will have a charger (ID Charger) that will have the capability of charging your car with solar power only, alongside its use as a conventional charger:


RAB
Audi are offering a free 7kW pod Point wall box when purchasing the e-tron Sportback. I think that I've read that charging your car exclusively from solar power is very problematic? I'm not sure why that was, but it may have been the rate of charge or lack of sun ....

David
 
I assume that the charger will charge the car when it senses there is an excess which would otherwise be exported to the grid. This would be no different to equipment you can buy to use excess solar power to power your immersion heater. Without that you can only charge when the sun is out while monitoring your meter. If the sun disappears, your car will charge from the mains! Even so, if the share from the mains is not too great, it is still cheaper to charge part-solar than other options.

RAB
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My parents have a 6kw set up. They are very remote with regular power cuts so it was a no brainier.

They have a 5kw battery and an immerser in a well insulated water tank. In summer they fully charge the battery and dump the excess into the hot tank and then when that’s hot the rest goes to the grid. They have still exported almost half of their generated electricity!

A bigger battery (and the 5kw battery is designed to be scalable without any trouble - it’s a rack system) and they could probably be entirety self supporting for 9 or 10 months a year. With an electric car which has a 24kw battery and I think they’d be laughing!

Their inverter set up allows them to set depth of discharge, decide when to use solar to heat and also how much of a reserve to leave in case of power cut.

It would be perfect with an electric car... shame they live a 250 mile journey away so would need to charge mid-journey!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
In here everyone is already paying for green energy. If we take what they plan to hand out to green energy producers this year and divide by population, that makes 75€ from everyone. And you still need to buy that electricity...
And clean expensive energy has moved energy expensive production into china etc, where they will burn coal to get that cheap energy.
Onshore wind and solar are already cheaper than nuclear and much cheaper than coal:


That's not the case until you get economy of scale, which initially requires subsidy.

By the way, I wouldn't advise connecting 400vdc to a television; it will probably be expensive as well as possibly lethal; 400vdc will immobilise you.

RAB
 
400vdc to a television
400V might be expensive, if they have really cheaped out on capacitors etc, but they are rated in many cases 450V. And given our voltage of 240V, they usually work at around 340V DC in their regular usage anyway. Thats why i'd choose little above 340 V, so if my sources would not handle it, grid would step in. Or something like that. Of course i'd take it apart first to see, but as much i've seen them, many things are ok with DC. Receiver would not work, old adapters etc... But that would need checking one by one anyway. That would be done mostly because i'd like do do it. But it would also eliminate converting DC from solar to AC and then in device back to DC.
DC to DC seems better choice for me and enables other options that can give or take power from common pool, much harder to play with AC like that.

Getting 400V DC might remind me why electricity is considered dangerous, but i'd prefer that to 240V AC probably. Of course that is my personal preference, and i don't recommend anyone to test out which one they prefer...
 
YES, I would very much like to have an electric A2
To be able to more or less "use up" my diesel car, and then, instead of put it in the vaste bin, convert it to an EV... would have been great ?

Have anyone seen a list of which parts one can strip off the A2, and the weight of the parts, before one starts to add on EV parts ?

Cheers
dieselfan
 
I studied many of the EV conversions on the German A2 forum. Here is some info I captured on weight;

The general consensus seems to be that the max battery weight is 200kg. There was one A2 conversion that was l limited by the authorities to just 3 people as the vehicle was deemed too heavy. For range, Tesla batteries are preferred as they have the best energy density. Whilst other batteries are coming on stream (e.g. for the ID.3) I think they will be hard to come by as the OEMs hoover up all available supplies.

When you take the batteries out of older EVs written off (not Tesla but e.g. Leaf) then you tend get lower capacity. Never-the-less, many of the 20 or so A2 conversions over the last 10 years have had ranges of up to 100 miles (summer/city) and this has suited the needs of their owners.
 

Attachments

  • Weight Calculations.txt
    3.3 KB · Views: 219
Last edited:
YES, I would very much like to have an electric A2
To be able to more or less "use up" my diesel car, and then, instead of put it in the vaste bin, convert it to an EV... would have been great ?

Have anyone seen a list of which parts one can strip off the A2, and the weight of the parts, before one starts to add on EV parts ?

Cheers
dieselfan
I'm hoping to get there too. Take my Tdi past 200 thousand miles and then convert it to electric.
I hope it's not so far away that we'll have a tried and tested kit of parts and installation instructions that we, (or competent mechanic), can use to convert our A2s into daily driver modern classics.
 
I studied many of the EV conversions on the German A2 forum. Here is some info I captured on weight;

The general consensus seems to be that the max battery weight is 200kg. There was one A2 conversion that was l limited by the authorities to just 3 people as the vehicle was deemed too heavy. For range, Tesla batteries are preferred as they have the best energy density. Whilst other batteries are coming on stream (e.g. for the ID.3) I think they will be hard to come by as the OEMs hoover up all available supplies.

When you take the batteries out of older EVs written off (not Tesla but e.g. Leaf) then you tend get lower capacity. Never-the-less, many of the 20 or so A2 conversions over the last 10 years have had ranges of up to 100 miles (summer/city) and this has suited the needs of their owners.

Thanks for good sharing, interesting to reed ?

I would still like to have more details related to stripped weight if anyone should have info.

Cheers dieselfan
 
I'm hoping to get there too. Take my Tdi past 200 thousand miles and then convert it to electric.
I hope it's not so far away that we'll have a tried and tested kit of parts and installation instructions that we, (or competent mechanic), can use to convert our A2s into daily driver modern classics.

It would be great if one could buy a deal like this:?
  1. I strip down my car (engine, servo steering pump and steering rack, tank, exhaust system
  2. Then I can fit 12V battery box, main battery box, battery cooling/heating system, EV motor and console per instructions
  3. Then can the professional take over and wire up the electrical kit while I plan tire and rims...
  4. Then I pay
If such a concept could be available.... I would buy

Cheers
dieselfan
 
Still looking for the elusive £5,000 cost to convert a classic A2 to electric - I'm optimistic that it's not so far in the future.

The firm [London Electric Cars] currently charges around £20,000 per conversion, so not cheap. But the company says it aims to drive that cost down to £5,000 to make it affordable for more people.
While the UK government currently offers a grant of £2,500 towards the cost of buying a new EV, Mr Quitter says they should also consider introducing grants for conversions.
"It's a disaster to waste the millions of old [petrol and diesel] cars on our roads, and the governments' EV rebates are encouraging scrappage," he says.
"The government needs to offer affordable conversions on cheap old cars, to make use of the scrapped EV batteries - which have raw materials that are still sky-rocketing in price," he adds.

BBC website - article on electrifying classic Morris Minors, Land Rovers etc.
 
I read that article as well. Once again it's very old cars they are converting with nothing modern like canbus.

I looked again at some conversion threads on the German A2 forum. Really disappointing in that some conversions that were well underway have had no postings for 6 or more months. Some of these projects had been underway for over a year. One was using Tesla batteries so potentially has a very long range. It's also gone quiet on this forum re the guy converting his A2 using I recall batteries and other components from a Leaf. I think it is proving more difficult (or more expensive) that originally envisaged.
 
Last edited:
Taking reverse engineering to extremes, when BMW i3's get a bit older and are scrapped off due to uneconomical battery replacement costs...........
I wonder if someone will do a petrol engine conversion.

Cheers Spike
Why would their replacement batteries be uneconomical? Battery costs are continually falling! New fossil-fuelled cars won't be allowed. Due to the economies of scale, comparable EVs will soon be cheaper than FF cars.

RAB
 
So if you electrify, then what is the need for canbus?
Canbus for the powertrain I suppose but don't integrate the drive train with the other vehicle functions..
Just go relay and switches....simple rewire at the same time.
??
 
Apologies if this has been posted before, Ed China has done a series which includes an electric ice cream van. Some very good content on conversion process, sadly the playlet isn't setup right, but here is the most recent
 
I read that article as well. Once again it's very old cars they are converting with nothing modern like canbus.

I looked again at some conversion threads on the German A2 forum. Really disappointing in that some conversions that were well underway have had no postings for 6 or more months. Some of these projects had been underway for over a year. One was using Tesla batteries so potentially has a very long range. It's also gone quiet on this forum re the guy converting his A2 using I recall batteries and other components from a Leaf. I think it is proving more difficult (or more expensive) that originally envisaged.
Just gone quite slow because of the day job! No more difficult or expensive than before. Have actually been back on it quite recently and currently have 18 out of 24 batteries properly mounted - just figuring out exactly where last 6 are going. Interestingly the car isn't sitting low at all with all batteries inside the car and the motor mounted. The interior is stripped out but it can't be that heavy?!

Batteries under the back seats where the fuel tank was... (seats back in and working as they should.)
Batteries fuel tank small.jpg
 
Back
Top