It is my hope, within the next few years, to semi-retire and spend some time exploring the planet via an overland expedition vehicle (see /r/overlanding). The vehicle that I have chosen is a military surplus M934, or possibly an M1087 if I can find one. These are not your typical vehicles for electric conversion as their GVW is upwards of 30,000lbs. I am exploring the feasibility of removing the terribly inefficient diesel engine and replacing it with a hybrid system akin to what city buses use, or what Nikola Motors is putting in their hybrid semi trucks, with either a direct replacement of the main engine with an electric motor or an electric motor at each axle. Power would be supplied to these motors from either a battery or a capacitor bank which would be constantly recharging via a diesel generator or other high efficiency ICE generator. My hope is that the generator could have a significantly lower total KW output with peak demands buffered by the battery pack. For instance, if the motor is 300kw, it would only draw that amount during hard acceleration or hill climbing. Under normal, flat ground travel, it may only draw 150KW. My generator could then be a high efficiency 200KW unit. During peak demand (>200KW), the battery bank would draw down, until I stopped accelerating or climbing when the load would drop and the battery would begin charging again. An additional benefit of the battery bank would be to provide some power for electrical devices, such as a stove or refrigerator. It is my hope that we could operate through the night without starting the generator. I have some mechanical engineering and CAD knowledge to design the physical aspects of this system, but precious little electrical knowledge (as may be apparent from this post). I have done done web searching and I can't find enough solid information to verify this concept or calculate the size of the motor/battery pack. I'm certainly not asking for a design, but could anyone here comment on the feasibility of this and maybe point me in the direction of additional information. Or tell me the things that I don't know that I don't know.
Submitted February 04, 2017 at 06:33AM by mastema http://ift.tt/2k5AmJ1 ECE
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