Hey guys... doing a little research, here's the skinny:

A while back I remember seeing (in a magazine somewhere? i think it was a brit mag) an article about an electric conversion for D110's. Replaced the petrol/diesel engine with a huge electric motor, had something like 400 lb/ft from 0 rpm... it was a side-by-side comparison to a regular D110.

that was a while back, but i just got started on an interesting design project (small mobile lab/living spaces for scientists in a bio-preserve in Tanzania) and this popped up as an interesting avenue for a short term (short distance at least) power unit for a sort of mobile home type vehicle where gas may be difficult to find, and generally not quite in the "zero environmental impact" goal of the project. the outfit will have an array of photovoltaics (i think on the order of 2kw), so a trickle charge of the batteries would certainly be possible in the bush... anyway, if any of you rover guys have seen anything that may be of help, I'd greatly appreciate it!!! I'm also interested in any links or info of general rover mobile lab/habitat stuff out there, regardless of powertrain. thanks again, everybody!

This is theonly one that I recall seeing...

http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/045.html

Small reference here to the "Lectro Rover" too.

http://www.evparts.com/_press/index.php?show=wilde.ihtml

KAA

Every time I go golfing I dream of a electric powered rover. There are a few "side trails" on the course that I take with a few good hill climbs and rocky areas. The electric motor has tons of torque and climbs like crazy. Of course this is only a golf cart. There was a article in I think 4wheel and off road or Petersons 4 wheel magazine about 5 years ago about a Series IIa rover that had a electric motor. It had a limited range but it walked all over Moab without a hitch and passed cars on the highway going uphill. Unheard of in a Series IIa. Great idea and would love to hear more.

The British military experimented with fitting an electric motor/genterator to the PTO port of a 109 in the 60's. It could drive and charge at the same time with the gas engine then drive from the electric motor when needed for stealth in the battle field recon roll. I've thought that this might work in a 90/110 to make a hybrid diesel/electric rover but the motor would have to be bitching strong to drive the truck only through the T-case I suspect.

thanks guys, anybody got any info on rover based mobile habitat/long term camping? i've googled the crap out of stuff, but to little avail.

There's a guy on 4x4wire.com who calls himself "EVguy". He talks of converting isuzu npr trucks to electric for (I think) mining work.
The diesel engines from those npr's fit rovers so the size can't be too far out. Plus the power/torque requirements would be similar.

There's this too:
http://www.evparts.com/about/roverFaceOffPhotos.html
Took it to Moab.

What about juust designing a Diesel/Electric hybrid? I think this would be the ultimate Hybrid. I believe they are doing this for some buses in Europe. The torque of a small Diesel, say a 1.9L vokswagen combined with the torque of an electric motor...

What about juust designing a Diesel/Electric hybrid? I think this would be the ultimate Hybrid. I believe they are doing this for some buses in Europe. The torque of a small Diesel, say a 1.9L vokswagen combined with the torque of an electric motor...

We're still in the very early stages of this, some of the idea's we're kicking around: small tractor style rig to pull a "trailer" containing a collapsed habitat, primarly electric with a small 1-2L diesel (compact, robust, no need for more than 20-50 hp) to a 2 or 3 speed tranny (granny gear 4:1, midrange 1.2:1 and over-drive .8:1). This would be kinda like an ATV, but primarily electric and way less sophisticated (read: less than 10 tools to completely disassemble type thing, like a VW Thing, or my Toyota :flipoff2: ). It could also be used as a small powered implement/tractor, like hook up a PTO kind of thing...

Another idea is to have a sort of box van, that is, chassis, engine/drivetrain, steering wheel, not much else... the chassis then gets used as a main structural component of the habitat. drivetrain is disassembled and used as light duty reciprocating/turning mechanism, non-mobile, but lightweight and useful for heavier labor.

When we started talking about parts/repair, we thought it would probably be useful to look towards vehicles popular everywhere, so naturally rovers came to mind!

enough babble, thanks for the help so far guys!!!

you might find some useful info here:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=215591&page=1&pp=25&highlight=electric+motor

you might find some useful info here:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=215591&page=1&pp=25&highlight=electric+motor


found that already, very good tech tho, answers a lot of questions... thanks!

alright - locals!

http://www.seattleeva.org/

the evparts and lectro rover guys are hard-core. I've spoken with a couple from seattle eva - they're into drag cars / boats / bikes whatever. there are a ton of electric conversions around here in ballard, actually. cool stuff.

Yotacowboy,

I've somehow become interested in EV conversion enough to consider it for my 89 Range Rover. Here's what I came up with:
- there's pretty much _one_ motor that fits the bill, 85 hp max. I wrote some simple simulation code in Matlab to see what sort of in-town performance I may expect in a 4500-lb vehicle; it turned out that I'll have to keep the transfer case and transmission, and with that, I'll reach 60mph in around 75 seconds, give or take.
- if I used 12 yellow-top Optimas for power, I'd use up about 1/6 of my total charge in ONE acceleration from standstill to 60 mph.
- the estimated range in town looks like 10-20 miles, or about one trip to work with some tailwind.
- recharging the 12-optima pack (assuming 0 to 100% charge every night) will take about $.73, give a take a quarter depending on your local electric rates.
- the conversion cost breaks down like this:
$1.5k for the motor, $1.5k for controller, $1.5k at least for batteries, and about $1k for all bells and whistles needed to get the ancillaries to run (power brakes, steering, etc.).

Now, you may want to de-rate my performance numbers, since they included no friction losses.
My biggest problem was to get the gearing TALL enough for highway use. The same motor may break the stock axleshafts from standstill in the 1st low.