Cooling System - Rickard Electric Beck Speedster Owner's Manual

Rickard Electric Special Edition – Owner's Manual
electric meter. The actual cost is based on your local electric utility rate. The
national average for electricity at this writing is 11.75 cents per kWh. At that
rate, if you drove the car to full discharge, it will cost about $2.35 to recharge
it. At 80 miles, this works out to about 2.9 cents per mile. If you get 100 miles
per charge, it is 2.35 cents per mile.
At $2.75 per gallon and 20 miles range to the gallon, gasoline costs by
comparison would be about 13.75 cents per mile.
This is NOT the reason electric car owners seem to be smiling all the time. But
they rarely apologize for it either.
FASTER CHARGING
The charger is located in the forward compartment under the carpeting just
forward of the firewall. It is connected to the battery system through a small
50 ampere Anderson connector on the left side of the car as you face this from
the front.
You can use an optional higher powered DC charger at home by disconnecting
this plug from the charger and connecting a similar plug from your larger
garage charger. In this way, you can use the onboard charger when away from
home, and a faster charger at your home location.
The charger must be capable of a Constant Current/Constant Voltage charge
curve of 126 vdc. The wiring in the car is capable of a maximum charge current
of 50 amps, which would reduce the time for a full charge to 3.5 hours.
In NO CASE should the system ever be charged above 126.6 vdc.

COOLING SYSTEM

One of the more expensive components of an electric car is the controller. This
device translates your throttle and brake inputs into drive current to the motor
and regenerative braking respectively and it is a central component of the drive
system.
As a very high power semiconductor electronic device, in this case controlling
up to 550 amperes of current to the drive motor, this is the most failure prone
device in the car. Over the years, it has been our observation that heat causes
controllers to fail, and that in the absence of heat, they last essentially forever.
The problem is that in switching 120vdc from the battery pack to 3 phase high
current power to the AC induction motor, they generate heat internally. The
better we can remove this heat, the longer it will last.
24 of 30