openinverter forum

Hello All glad to get into this forum. My name is Gary and I live in the North West of England.
we have a 2001 swift motor home that is very precious to me and my wife and i would very much like to convert it to EV.
The motor home is 5m in length as is powered by a 1.9td motor with a manual gearbox.
I have a mig welder and arc and know how to use them, I have always fixed my own cars and i look forward to making our Motorhome electric.
I would be grateful of any suggestions of the most efficient way to achieve this .
Thanks Gary.

Hello Gary. Where are you in the North West ? I may be local to you. Peter

Hello Peter I am in Clayton Le Woods,
Regards Gary

Hi Gary. I am near Osbaldeston so not too far away. Two main questions, whats your budget and range required? Peter

This conversion won't be happening until after August this year as we get active in it from May and i wouldn't want to upset my wife when she wants to go on holiday and the van is in the air.
But my budget would be whatever i can get the necessary Nissan stack for and wiring and Battery, I don't mind paying good money for the right gear.
The range i would be happy with around 130 miles.
Regards Gary

What battery are you looking into?

Not sure about the shape of your motor home but I'd expect something rather boxy. So for consumption figures I'd check Mercedes EQV for example. Maybe eNV-200 would also compare. The EQV is 344 Wh/km in Björn Nylands winter test at 90 km/h (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =735351678). From my experience I'd expect 30% less in summer, so 240 Wh/km or 385 Wh/mile. So you'd need at very least 50 kWh usable energy for your 130 mile requirement (at 55 mph!)

On the plus side it should be fairly easy to accommodate it in your camper.

I would expect a proper motor home to consume almost 400Wh/km. The frontal area is massively bigger than in a small van. Basically take the diesel consumption in l/100km and multiply it by about 35.

Also, motor homes don't have a lot of excess carrying capacity. I would expect having to use Tesla or other very energy dense batteries to legally reach 200km range. Basically get a full pack, and hope for the best.

Thanks for the replies Johu and Celeron ,I intend to remove the waste water tank which is situated between the chassis legs and relocate the spare wheel to the rear bumper and when i remove the diesel tank there will be loads of room for batteries.
The motor home Has rear air bags fitted to stop the rear leaf springs from contacting the bump stops they are rated at 4.5 tonnes.
I appreciate it has really bad aerodynamics but this has to be done.Not sure what batteries I am going to fit It will be what is most suitable.
How do you add photos .
Regards Gary

Here the Motorhome
Regards Gary

Oh yeah, that looks more like 400 Wh/km. How much is Diesel consumption at travel speed?

At 70 mph it returns about 22 mpg I will have to get some good battery packs. Plenty of space to fit them between the chassis rails.
Regards Gary

Ok, that makes it roughly 0.10 l/km equating to 1 kWh/km of Diesely energy. Assuming 25% efficiency you're at 250 Wh/km and assuming 85% efficiency for battery, inverter and motor you end up at 300 Wh/km. Comes close to celerons factor 35 when using l/100km figure.

Thanks for working all that out Johannes the great majority of that has gone over my head. are you saying that the end figure would be consuming
300 watts per Kilometre, so whatever battery pack i manage to install ,I am to divide the battery pack by 300 W to get an approximate range.
when the Motorhome is an EV it will have a more sedate life at a maximum 60 mph.
As I drive it around i just can't imagine it as an EV it will be some Buzz when i first drive it.
Regards Gary

Harty wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 7:37 am Thanks for working all that out Johannes the great majority of that has gone over my head. are you saying that the end figure would be consuming
300 watts per Kilometre, so whatever battery pack i manage to install ,I am to divide the battery pack by 300 W to get an approximate range.
when the Motorhome is an EV it will have a more sedate life at a maximum 60 mph.
As I drive it around i just can't imagine it as an EV it will be some Buzz when i first drive it.
Regards Gary

Yes, so if for example your efficiency was 300Wh/Km you could divide your pack Wh's to get your range in kilometers.
(note - Watts are a measure of power - Wh; watt hours are a measure of energy capacity)
So if you had a 60kWh pack = 60,000Wh / 300 = 200Km (124 miles range. )
Obviously in the real world you wouldn't want to be going to 0% capacity so you'd want to add in a buffer maybe 10%? so your 60kWh pack becomes 54kWh and you get a range of 54000/300=180Km (112miles)
also again in the 'real world' you will find your range drop in the winter - so if your efficiency went from 300 to 400Wh/Km that would reduce your range of your 54kWh usable pack to 135Km - (84 miles!)

As your aerodynamic drag would be very poor every mph you can knock off your cruise speed would give you a big gain in efficiency. 70mph down to 60 would be huge.