As has been mentioned on these forums at various times, it was stated that merely owning a vehicle already is not a good reason to convert it; you should want to drive the car. So it should be a moderately good car, possibly even new. Apparently, in the USA, you can actually buy a chassis with no motor, and get full warranty on the parts that you do buy. Blade EV may be doing something similar with Hyundai Getz chassis.
Someone mentioned that they'd seen a Mercedes A-class up on a hoist, and were very impressed with the amount of room available for batteries under the cabin floor. The A-class is the first and apart from the B-class, which seems to be a roomier version of the A-class, I don't believe that any other vehicle uses the "sandwich" structure, which allows a variety of drivetrains to be supported by one chassis design, and also enhances safety by pushing the engine or motor under the cabin in the even of a head-on collision.
Mercedes Benz vehicles have a good reputation for reliability; I've seen 70's model Mercs with over 600,000 km on the clock for sale still working well. So I did some research on them, and thought I'd post my findings here as a discussion point.
There is a cost however; the ICE engines are a strange triangular shape with the pistons at about 45° to the horizontal:
Note the elaborate belts along the right side, and the starter motor right under the 45° sloping firewall. From this advertisement:
"The A-Class range have some problems that other people will not tell you about. If they aren't serviced well they have have issues.
These issues are:
The starter motors fail in them, while this is easy to fix in most other cars, due to the design of the A Class the job requires the engine, gearbox and subframe to be removed, this costs anywhere from $2500-3600 for parts and labour to do. There are tell tale signs and when they show, people get quotes and when they get the shock, they sell them (that's how I purchased mine).
The rubbers around the front quarter window perish which is not a big deal. Also the hydraulic system for the clutch fail when fluid is not replaced regularly."
Wow, $3600 for a starter motor. That might push some people to sell them before the chassis is totally worn out. Also, it means you could replace the starter motor once you take the engine out for conversion, and sell it as a working motor for the cost of the parts. (They literally look gold plated, see below where A marks the starter and solenoid, but it would presumably be a lot cheaper than $2500).
So to the car itself. The A-class is the smallest car that Mercedes make, and the B-class is just a little bigger. With the false floor, the seats are higher, making the car easier to get into and out of. The car is tall for a small vehicle as a result. In fact, the early A-class cars failed the severe moose test by overturning and injuring the testers. The story goes that after playing down the issue for a while, Mercedes fixed the problem with wider tyres, stability control, and various tweaks, and recalled all 2600 or so vehicles sold to that point. So the problem is presumably fixed for the ICE version, but with a lot of battery weight down low, an EV A-class or B-class would be very stable, I would think.
This is a 2003 A-class I looked at yesterday:
Some drawings I've found on the net:
A-class:
B-class:
My attempt at overlaying the above two, aligning the front tyres:
There is a "long wheel base" model of the A-class, and there was a "face lift" in 2005 which improved various details of the cars. The face lifted cars have 270° speedometer and tachometer, which I prefer over the older 120° speedo with 90° tacho.
There are various transmissions that come with the A-class and B-class models; they are all front wheel drive. There is a 5-speed manual transmission with clutch pedal, a 5-speed manual with "auto" clutch (no clutch pedal), but you still have the same H-pattern gear selection. So this is not a sequential manual transmission, unfortunately. There is a 5-speed auto with sports-like + and - options, which can of course be driven as a full automatic by leaving it in "D". On the B-class, there is also a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) option, which still seems to have a torque converter. This has 7 "virtual gears" to choose. I'm still in the process of deciding which of these is suitable for EV conversions. The auto-clutch manual sounds interesting, but it would presumably require interaction with the engine computer.
There are several models, with the model giving a strong clue to the ICE engine size.
For under $15K, you can find the A140, A160, and A190, which start at years 2000, 1998, and 1999 respectively. The A160 with the 1.6 L motor is by far the most common.
For under $20K, there are the A150 and A170, which came out around 2005. The A200 (with a 2L motor) and B200 models are also from 2005, starting at just over $20K, and 26K respectively. The B180CDI (diesel) is from about 2006 and also starts at about $26K. Of these later models, the A170 seems to be the most popular in carsales.com.au. There is also an A180 CDI from 2008, starting at well over $30K. But I guess you may find one with a blown engine cheaper.
So what can you fit into one of these cars? There is Lester's B series (see also the EVAlbum page). He fitted 96 100 Ah Thunder Sky cells.
Daimler Benz fitted this Zebra battery in:
From http://www.nyteknik.se/multimedia/archi ... 52405a.pdf. That battery measures 933 x 793 x 280 mm, according to the article. It might protude into the vehicle slightly, since the false floor seems to be 220 mm high.
From looking at an actual A160 with a salesman at close call, I couldn't get a feel for how much equipment is located in that space. At minimum, the anchor points for the various seats would protude down slightly into the space. Certainly, the petrol tank and exhaust system are there. I would have had to take off some plastic covers to see what else is in there.
Lester's is the only modern Mercedes in the whole EV Album. Why aren't these cars more popular as donors? Is it just that most people are on a tight budget, or are there other problems I haven't forseen?
A useful resource, there some of the above pictures came from: http://www.aclassinfo.co.uk/mypage.1.htm
Edit: added A150 and A180 CDI models.
Edit: add "stability control" to subject
And there's about 30 sensors to fake, some of which aren't easy to do.
