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Post by marshinman on May 22, 2011 13:07:15 GMT -5
I am new to this forum and from what I understand alot of the members her do not know much about the electric scooters or think that they are just kids toys that we have all seen.
Well those fact are fiction as I will show you here quickly.
First let me say that I bought my Panterra electric scooter about 3 years ago from a lady who was the original owner and had bought it to go from her house to the dock where her boat was.
I bought it when fuel prices were increasing and figured I could use it to go to work, well due to the distance from my house to work which was 26 miles taking the back roads it would not do the complete trip because it was only good for 22 miles as I found out after I bought it.
So it then became a great scooter to go from our house to the local store and back and my wife used it to go and visit the local farm and enjoy the country side.
My wife's only complaint was that it did not last long enough for her ride and wanted to go further. I then did some modifications to the scooter.
1) Increased the shunt size so it could handle larger amounts of current, current is what you need to go further not voltage.
2) Installed two 12 v 14ah batteries into the scooter for the longer duration.
With the simple modifications I did the scooter was then able to go 25 miles on a full charge and was converted from being a 750 watt scooter to a 900 watt scooter.
Here are some pictures of the scooter and I will give you a startling surprise at the end of the pictures.
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Post by 2strokd on May 22, 2011 13:38:13 GMT -5
COOL!!! :rockon: We need some ele scoots around IMO  ! Im interested and tuned in :popcorn: ! Oh, welcome to the forum :welcome: |
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Post by marshinman on May 22, 2011 15:22:00 GMT -5
Ok,
So I need some help.
How do you go about posting images to a thread?
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Post by 2strokd on May 22, 2011 15:30:24 GMT -5
I use photobucket
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Post by 90GTVert on May 22, 2011 23:14:09 GMT -5
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Post by marshinman on May 23, 2011 4:32:21 GMT -5
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Post by marshinman on May 23, 2011 4:34:01 GMT -5
Notice it does not have a fuel gauge but has a charge gauge.  |
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Post by marshinman on May 23, 2011 4:36:50 GMT -5
Here is the rear wheel. The rear wheel is actually the motor/ generator. I will explain more on this later.   |
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Post by marshinman on May 23, 2011 4:38:25 GMT -5
The pedal shown here is for the rear brake, unlike most scooters that have hand levers for the front and rear.  |
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Post by marshinman on May 23, 2011 5:09:17 GMT -5
Ok, so for some basics.
All electric scooters are the same to some degree.
The all have the following components.
A Controller, Rheostat(Variable Resistor/ Throttle), Batteries and a motor.
What make each one different is the amount of voltage and watts which determines the length or duration you can travel and the ability to regenerate a charge back into the battery.
Not all scooter have the ability to regenerate a charge back into the battery.
This scooter did not have the ability to regenerate a charge but with some research and a little bit of soldering I made it happen.
This scooter had a button located on the right hand grip area that was intended to turn the scooter off, why have this when you have a key switch to do this. So I made the circuit which consisted of a relay, some diodes and a couple resistors and of course some wire that would take the rear hub motor and then generate a charge back into the battery. So when going down a hill you press the button in and the rear hub motor then begins to charge the batteries, while this will not completely recharge the batteries it is helpful in going that extra distance and making it back home.
The other mod I made to this scooter was to add two additional 12v 14ah batteries in line with the existing ones, not to increase voltage but to increase current (watts) this provides the extra time needed for travel. Along with doing this the controller also had to be modified to accept the extra current, I increased the shunt, which was a small piece of wire that all the current traveled through and changed it to a piece of coat hanger wire.
I did experiment with added more batteries to increase voltage which increased speed and yes it went from doing an average of about 34 mph to doing 44 mph but at the same time it caused the rear hub motor to get very warm almost hot, so I decided this was not a good thing as the rear hub motor was not designed to accept 72 volts and would most likely shorten the life.
The other thing to say about this scooter is that it uses a standard scooter frame and all they do is exchange the motor for a battery tray and the rear wheel for a hub motor. So if I had another motor/trans I could turn it into a gas scooter. I have thought of this but that will kill the whole idea behind the scooter.
It takes about 4 hours to completely charge the scooter and 22 miles later it needs charged again. While you may think that electric scooter have no power, well consider this I can take myself and my wife a combined total weight of 285 lbs and go down the road with no hesitation at all. I have also on a wet day meaning after it has rained taken it out in the road and stood up and gave it all the throttle and it will smoke the rear tire.
If you are looking into getting an electric scooter and have any questions I will be glad to help out if I can.
If you look on the internet you can find these scooter for sale on craigslist and ebay, the company went out of business a few years ago but parts are readily available.
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Post by marshinman on May 23, 2011 5:38:56 GMT -5
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Post by 90GTVert on May 23, 2011 7:49:08 GMT -5
Great info! Thank you. That answers a lot of questions I had. I had already assumed electric would have plenty of torque to work with, but I really didn't know about the speeds. Pretty cool how they convert the engine area to a big battery tray. I guess all of the lights are powered by the batteries? If that's the case, swapping to LED bulbs and even an LED for a headlight if you are solely day riders may be beneficial?
The main thing that would keep me from going electric would be the 22 mile range. My short rides usually end up close to that far. Can you squeeze much more out of it if you are easy on the throttle (rheostat)?
Nice animation too. Nice work including a scoot!
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Post by lshigham on May 23, 2011 8:18:28 GMT -5
Yeah, 22mi range would kill the fun for me  I went for a ''quick'' test ride yesterday - ended up 15miles away  |
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Post by 2strokd on May 23, 2011 10:47:56 GMT -5
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Post by marshinman on May 24, 2011 5:04:12 GMT -5
I did experiment with nicad batteries on the scooter. I went to the local recycle yard and bought several and I mean several old laptop battery packs. Inside each one are individual nicad batteries. I spent about a week in taking the battery packs apart and then found the best of the cells. I then put them together in 12v packs and charged each pack separate and then drained each pack down using a ceramic resistor and then charged them all back up. You do this to make sure each cell in the pack is the same when charging. So I then charged them again. I attached them to the scooter and got about 500 feet before they died. I later found out the reason this happened is that while the pack does have 12 volts, they do not have enough current. In order to produce the same or greater current as the lead acid batteries I would need to have several more batteries in each pack that what I did have and I would not have a way of charging them. So back to the lead acid I went. I like the EVT scooter, I had never heard of them before, that must be the controller on the outside of the scooter. Last year I almost bought this scooter. www.mobilewhack.com/wp-content/pics/2009/12/axle_sumo_bike.jpgWhile it uses and electric motor to get started and get up to 15mph after that a a series of magnets take over and it can upwards to 90mph. While the magnets are creating the movement the electric motor then turns into a generator and charges the batteries. The price is around $2000.00. There is a Lithium conversion kit you can purchase for the scooters but it is quite pricey. Take a look here soundspeedscooters.com/content/lithium-conversion-kit-evt-scooters |
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. I think on would be great for someone like me who has everything within 5-10miles of home ;D. Ide love to have one! Ive seen one around here and that was a while back. We need more of em IMO. A lithium version would be lighter and last loads longer with allot more torque and power. Im sure the bigger scoots are the same, if you are easy on my sons throttle it will last longer between charges. Same with breaks in running. If you stop and let it cool and "rest" it will refresh itself some. 
