Thinking about buying a Prius to learn about electric motors...

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ElDominio
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Thinking about buying a Prius to learn about electric motors...

Post by ElDominio »

Hey guys,

I've been thinking, after a life of absolute carbon-murdering gas cars, to get a used Prius as a daily and start tinkering around with the electric motor stuff. I do quit a bit of programming stuff, but I'm pretty dumb on the electrical side of things. I've been thinking about doing an EV conversion for some time now, and I saw all the inverter boards for sale, but as far as I can understand, that's for use on EV conversions right?
I can't just plop an openinveter on a running Prius and starts tinkering around with the MG's right?

I do know my way around CANBUS, so if it would need help to make it work, I could take it upon myself. But I just know how to do things with gasoline engines, and i feel like I should start learning about electric ones soon.

Thanks beforehand!
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rstevens81
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Re: Thinking about buying a Prius to learn about electric motors...

Post by rstevens81 »

Personally I would keep the cash back towards the project car, as the biggest money pit in the conversion bit is sorting out the mechanicals (non ev related - just fixing the car!)!
Get yourself a good condition base car (that you like) and buy a mig welder & gas! Many of us have been tripped up by this 😁
Most modern cars have can bus so you might as well play on the real car.
The zombieverter project is a good place to start as it's made to be simple I want to say plug and play :?
Buy a auris/Prius motor and inverter with a zombie would be the way I would go (if I were doing a fwd), Outlander motor & inverters (rear) Look good if your happy with 60-70kw.
There is lots of videos out there to get you head around electricals (zero, Damian etc)
Rule 1 of EV Club is don't buy a rust bucket....
Which rule does everyone forget 🤪
ElDominio
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Re: Thinking about buying a Prius to learn about electric motors...

Post by ElDominio »

I think I framed my question wrong lol

I meant keeping all the hybrid stuff, I just want to be able to change the power output of the MG's, and maybe the engagement points/shutoff points between the MG's and the gasoline engine, no full EV conversions yet.

I have people to do the welding and stuff for the other project, but I was thinking that tinkering with the Prius first would help a lot, which would just be basically tuning the gasoline engine AND the electric engine.

How about that?
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celeron55
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Re: Thinking about buying a Prius to learn about electric motors...

Post by celeron55 »

What you're talking about is modifying how the Prius VCU works. It's fully proprietary with not much interest for open source replacements and it's useless as a generic part in conversions. Modifying what it does would require reverse engineering basically the entire vehicle and then replacing it with an open source board, probably a custom one.
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