Saturday, June 14, 2014

500 miles on LiFePO4

Yesterday, the ElectroJeep pushed over the 500 mile mark with its new lithium battery.   I've been tracking its performance along the way.  First, as detailed earlier on this blog, it has a "parasitic load" which at this time looks like about 39 milliamps, which translates to about 300 Wh lost per day regardless of whether the ElectroJeep was driven or not.  Second, after correcting for this parasitic load, it is getting about 428 Wh/mi wall-to-wheels.  This translates to 79 mpge (a standard metric used to compare electric vehicles to others).  Compare this to the Jeep's original factory rating of 19 mpg!

Finally, here is a chart plotting miles driven against kWh used:


The red dotted trend line is a least-squares fit to the usage, corrected for the parasitic load.  It's very linear, except for that one drive where the ElectroJeep sat idle for a couple of weeks.

It's exciting how reliable and useful the ElectroJeep is, especially compared to the old lead AGM batteries.  It's my daily driver (especially with the Porsche undergoing a similar upgrade).  For anybody looking to convert a vehicle, I strongly suggest you save your pennies until you can afford LiFePO4 - you will be much happier in the long run.