Freelander 1 Freelander EV

Alibro said:

Sadly Tesla chargers will not work for me but if I can steal electrons from you or others that will be very much appreciated.

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No problem at all!

Alibro said:

Sadly Tesla chargers will not work for me but if I can steal electrons from you or others that will be very much appreciated.

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Not meaning to be a bellend, but simply curious, why can't tesla chargers be made to work in your EV, and or what would it take to make them charge your E-Lander?

Jayridium said:

Not meaning to be a bellend, but simply curious, why can't tesla chargers be made to work in your EV, and or what would it take to make them charge your E-Lander?

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Currently I can only charge using AC and Tesla chargers are DC. I'm not even sure Tesla has enabled their chargers for none Tesla's yet although I heard they were going to.
At some point I plan to install a BMW DC charger but it is very complicated and not all fast chargers will work with it. Damien Maguire has cracked them so it is possible but not easy.

I'm assuming you could use the Leaf's CHAdeMO connector Ali?

Jayridium said:

Not meaning to be a bellend, but simply curious, why can't tesla chargers be made to work in your EV, and or what would it take to make them charge your E-Lander?

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Charging an electric car is more complicated than just stuffing electrons down a pipe to the battery. There are a couple of ways that a vehicle is charged, one is by using an on board charger, which is normally what is used at home.
There's also an on board charge controller interface, for AC charging.
And then there's DC fast charging. The latter 2 charging systems are quite complicated to implement on a DIY level.

In order for the battery to be charged, the vehicle does a handshake with the charger on a couple of extra wires in the socket. This handshake basically says "I am a car, and I'd like to pull X number of of Volts and Amps " .
If there's no handshake from the car to the charger, then the charger doesn't output any power (this keeps the plug dead until its actually plugged into a vehicle), and car signal also regulates how much energy can pass to the vehicle from the charger.

Now how the battery is charged also varies, depending on vehicle and charger design, but fast charging at vehicle chargers is difficult to achieve, especially DC fast charging.

Tesla use there own proprietary connectors and charge protocol, so those can't be used my other vehicles.

Nodge68 said:

I'm assuming you could use the Leaf's CHAdeMO connector Ali?

Charging an electric car is more complicated than just stuffing electrons down a pipe to the battery. There are a couple of ways that a vehicle is charged, one is by using an on board charger, which is normally what is used at home.
There's also an on board charge controller interface, for AC charging.
And then there's DC fast charging. The latter 2 charging systems are quite complicated to implement on a DIY level.

In order for the battery to be charged, the vehicle does a handshake with the charger on a couple of extra wires in the socket. This handshake basically says "I am a car, and I'd like to pull X number of of Volts and Amps " .
If there's no handshake from the car to the charger, then the charger doesn't output any power (this keeps the plug dead until its actually plugged into a vehicle), and car signal also regulates how much energy can pass to the vehicle from the charger.

Now how the battery is charged also varies, depending on vehicle and charger design, but fast charging at vehicle chargers is difficult to achieve, especially DC fast charging.

Tesla use there own proprietary connectors and charge protocol, so those can't be used my other vehicles.

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This pretty well sums it up but to add to the complication every charging station company use their own systems so it is a complicated business. I've seen Damien have no problem charging his car at one location and struggle at another. You would think there should be standardisation but unfortunately not yet.

I have the Chademo connector and the charging hardware but as you said, getting it to talk to the charger is the problem. If I had installed the entire Leaf wiring loom and all modules along with the Leaf battery then it may have been possible to implement DC charging but firstly I never planned to do the conversion that way but also the car I bought had no battery and without a suitable battery from a similar age car (which was a feeble 24kWh) it is another level of complication getting it to work.

Still thinking as a clanky here, would it be possible to run a tesla BMS (presuming it's the BMS that does the controlling of the chargeing) in parallel to or instead of the Leaf gubbins that's feeding the motors? Like i saiy this is me asking questions to fill in gaps in my knowledge, not knocking what you're doing, just trying to bridge the gap from balance charging LiPo's for RC toys and whats involved in charging Real Electric Vehicles.

This bit sounds like a bit of a headache to me. You should just be able to to put the brown or red wire on one side, and the blue or black wire on t'other (obviously giving the red/brown one a lick first to check it)

Jayridium said:

Still thinking as a clanky here, would it be possible to run a tesla BMS (presuming it's the BMS that does the controlling of the chargeing) in parallel to or instead of the Leaf gubbins that's feeding the motors? Like i saiy this is me asking questions to fill in gaps in my knowledge, not knocking what you're doing, just trying to bridge the gap from balance charging LiPo's for RC toys and whats involved in charging Real Electric Vehicles.

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The BMS manages the battery but the VCU talks to the charger and the BMS and everything else. Unless everything is talking the same language and shaking hands with the correct secret handshake the charger won't release the angry pixes. I'm not aware of anyone ever cracking Tesla's secret codes.
To be honest I haven't given DC charging much thought as I'm having a tough enough job getting my head around AC charging.

You are also welcome here for a charge and a nose around the assorted electrical stuff, plus a rare L series Freelander! I'm down near Bath in Somerset.

On the DC charging front, I believe Chademo has been pretty widely hacked and isn't so tricky to implement. Tesla in Europe use CCS in their later cars so support that in their fast charging network. CCS is a trickier thing to hack, so far Damien has had success using the BMW LIM modules. I think he is working on developing that, potentially we could just buy a blank BMW lim modules from BMW for sub £300 and program in the CCS firmware for a cheap CCS implementation.
DC charging just requires another couple of contactors in the junction box and then the right 0s and 1s down the CP line, in theory. So there isn't physically that much extra to add. Certainly a stretch goal though after the initial conversion is complete.

Wonk said:

You are also welcome here for a charge and a nose around the assorted electrical stuff, plus a rare L series Freelander! I'm down near Bath in Somerset.

On the DC charging front, I believe Chademo has been pretty widely hacked and isn't so tricky to implement. Tesla in Europe use CCS in their later cars so support that in their fast charging network. CCS is a trickier thing to hack, so far Damien has had success using the BMW LIM modules. I think he is working on developing that, potentially we could just buy a blank BMW lim modules from BMW for sub £300 and program in the CCS firmware for a cheap CCS implementation.
DC charging just requires another couple of contactors in the junction box and then the right 0s and 1s down the CP line, in theory. So there isn't physically that much extra to add. Certainly a stretch goal though after the initial conversion is complete.

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Cheers mate, I appreciate that. I spent a weekend in Bath around 25 years ago and loved it so a visit there would be great.
Yes I'm concentrating on getting the damn thing on the road with ac charging but hope to upgrade to something faster later.

I've been doing a bit more research and it looks like my ac charger is capable of 3.6kW or 15A charging but needs to be controlled correctly for this to happen.
It won't charge at 15A from a granny charger so it looks like I need to look into getting a 16A EVSE wall charger for home charging
If I can make this work then it should also work with public ac chargers so I might be able to get the charge time down from 16 hours to just 10.
Julian Ilett has a brilliant series starting here where he talks at length about EVSE.

Alibro said:

I've been doing a bit more research and it looks like my ac charger is capable of 3.6kW or 15A charging but needs to be controlled correctly for this to happen.
It won't charge at 15A from a granny charger so it looks like I need to look into getting a 16A EVSE wall charger for home charging
If I can make this work then it should also work with public ac chargers so I might be able to get the charge time down from 16 hours to just 10.
Julian Ilett has a brilliant series starting here where he talks at length about EVSE.

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I've been watching, even though what Julian is doing can be bought for a couple of hundred £.

Nodge68 said:

I've been watching, even though what Julian is doing can be bought for a couple of hundred £.

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I wondered about that, he paid over a couple of hundred £ for the evse he bought.

Alibro said:

I wondered about that, he paid over a couple of hundred £ for the evse he bought.

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I know Julian reasonably well, and he likes to tinker with stuff.
However for me, I'd rather buy a commercial product and get the befits sooner, rather than waste months on a home brew solution, which could well be compromised in performance or safety.

Nodge68 said:

I know Julian reasonably well, and he likes to tinker with stuff.
However for me, I'd rather buy a commercial product and get the befits sooner, rather than waste months on a home brew solution, which could well be compromised in performance or safety.

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I think the commercial product that can redirect solar to charge your car is pretty expensive hence the DIY project.
It doesn't hurt that he makes money from his videos while doing it.

Alibro said:

I think the commercial product that can redirect solar to charge your car is pretty expensive hence the DIY project.

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A Zappi is about £700 + installation, but if you consider that the average motorist now puts over £2000 of dino juice in an average car per year, the Zappi charging the car with free solar energy is very reasonable.

Alibro said:

It doesn't hurt that he makes money from his videos while doing it.

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Maybe that's part of the motivation for making his own.

I think these batteries might get you to Cornwall @Alibro - would you like me to see if I can sneak in and nick them for you...

https://www.poal.co.nz/media-publications/Pages/Sparky-arrives-in-Auckland.aspx

Sparky, world’s first full sized, ship-handling e-tug arrives in Auckland

• Sparky is the first Damen RSD-E Tug 2513.
• She has a 6-metre draft, is 24.73 length and has two azimuth thrusters with 3-metre diameter propellers.
• Sparky has a 70-tonne bollard pull (the same as the port's strongest diesel tug, Hauraki).
• There are 80 battery racks holding 2,240 batteries, totalling 2,784 kWh of power.
• We expect Sparky to do up to four shipping moves on a charge of batteries. Recharge time is approximately two hours.
• Sparky is anticipated to save approximately 465 tonnes of CO2 in diesel emissions annually.
• To ensure absolute safety – of utmost importance in shipping – Sparky also has two 1000kW back-up generator sets which will only be used in cases of emergency or some fault that is not part of business as usual. We expect to use them at most, once or twice a year.
• The expected cost of operating Sparky is less than a third of the cost of running a diesel tug.
• There will be approximately six weeks of testing in Auckland before Sparky is fully commissioned and operational.
• Sparky was named via a public competition and vote in 2020.

GrumpyGel said:

Sparky has a 70-tonne bollard pull (the same as the port's strongest diesel tug, Hauraki).

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That's a lot of pulling power, enough to pull down a forest or a proper brick built house!

GrumpyGel said:

Sparky was named via a public competition and vote in 2020

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Nice name too, so much better than Boaty Mcboatface, that people in the UK chose for some science vessel (IIRC) a while back.

GrumpyGel said:

I think these batteries might get you to Cornwall @Alibro - would you like me to see if I can sneak in and nick them for you...

https://www.poal.co.nz/media-publications/Pages/Sparky-arrives-in-Auckland.aspx

Sparky, world’s first full sized, ship-handling e-tug arrives in Auckland

View attachment 271357

• Sparky is the first Damen RSD-E Tug 2513.
• She has a 6-metre draft, is 24.73 length and has two azimuth thrusters with 3-metre diameter propellers.
• Sparky has a 70-tonne bollard pull (the same as the port's strongest diesel tug, Hauraki).
• There are 80 battery racks holding 2,240 batteries, totalling 2,784 kWh of power.
• We expect Sparky to do up to four shipping moves on a charge of batteries. Recharge time is approximately two hours.
• Sparky is anticipated to save approximately 465 tonnes of CO2 in diesel emissions annually.
• To ensure absolute safety – of utmost importance in shipping – Sparky also has two 1000kW back-up generator sets which will only be used in cases of emergency or some fault that is not part of business as usual. We expect to use them at most, once or twice a year.
• The expected cost of operating Sparky is less than a third of the cost of running a diesel tug.
• There will be approximately six weeks of testing in Auckland before Sparky is fully commissioned and operational.
• Sparky was named via a public competition and vote in 2020.

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Pretty cool. 2.784MW of power would be enough.

Nodge68 said:

That's a lot of pulling power, enough to pull down a forest or a proper brick built house!


Nice name too, so much better than Boaty Mcboatface, that people in the UK chose for some science vessel (IIRC) a while back.

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You can be damn sure I'll not be putting it out to LZ to find a name for my Leccy Freelander.

Alibro said:

You can be damn sure I'll not be putting it out to LZ to find a name for my Leccy Freelander.

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No on AG anyway.
How about 'Freelander E' ?