Electric Vehicle Conversion - 96 Toyota Tercel to 144v Plug-in Electric Car

Front Side Battery Array

The front array worked out really well. After discussing it with Tom back and forth and a few hundred permutations we were able to stash 6 batteries in the front compartment. The current design is going without a power inverter and is just using one of the twelve batteries as the auxiliary power supply for the wipers and lights. This isn't the best design but considering the cost of a good inverter with the cost of a cheap 12 v charger that we can dedicate to this single batter, it seems to make sense during our prototyping stage.

The forward rack uses angle iron that forms a basic tray that sits just over the motor. We use some of the plastic shielding to keep the batteries down coupled with plastic plating that can surround the trays. The larger fear is just having a rock throw up thru the bottom of the engine and crack one of the cells. With the type of batteries though it shouldn't cause major issues, but no sense asking someone to punch you just because you think you will be ok. Lessons learned from Harry Houdini.

Once you get rid of the innards of the standard internal combusion engine there actually is a lot of space to work with. The lead-acid batteries aren't the best storage of energy but currently, you cant beat the price and availability.

The forward three fit right inside of the front grille and these have a lot more plastic in front of them to prevent intrusion into the main frame. The fact that they can sit lower in the frame is good for stability as well as the natural formation of a 'shelf' that we can put the controller array on.

Here is a better view of the front and back battery arrangement. In the final version we rotated the two nearest, top batteries to make the routing of the conduit easier and to shorten the lengths of the lines.