Hello
Think owner here. Had it for about 6 months now and have been on this site getting some great tips and ideas on some upgrades.
Of course after a little reading about lithium conversions I was thinking this sounded like a great option. The current batteries are Duracell 12v and we’re going fine but worried I damaged them by running out of power because they have lost a lot of punch over the past month. I am hoping I can revive / recondition them to get some more life but am also moving forward with the lithium conversion as soon as possible… hoping i can figure it out with some help from here.
The main goal is more range and also expecting better performance with less weight. 30 miles range would be ideal and I am in a hilly area with stop and go use. Any suggestions on battery size and places to find them would be great. Pretty sure I’m going with the lipo4 but open to other suggestions/thoughts on what’s the better option.
Reading about people upping the voltage that they run and curious if there are any issues to worry about with this and how much it improves performance.
Sure there are some more questions coming but let’s see how it goes.
25s lifepo4 are ideal for 72v cars. Go with 120ah or more for your 30m plus range. 60ah are the minimum for 25mph level ground.
I have a 22s Tesla3 that just became available. 18kwh 225ah should give 100 mile range.
Needs 40" of room for battery. An issue with e2 and e4 gems, and the reason it is available.
If you go with lifepo4, I recommend kiss.
Use shunt balance boards only. Manually check top balance on the first few charge cycles. The onboard leds let you monitor battery status easily.
Thanks for the post. Looking into the KISS suggestion and definitely wanted to have a BMS system. Do you know if anyone has installed the Tesla battery in a Ford think? 100 mile range sounds pretty nice.
Do you have any suggestions on what charger to use for the lifepo4 set up?
No, but a Think owner suggested enough room for a 40" long battery.
The 22s may be sold soon.
24s is same length, but pretty high voltage for average user.
I have enough Tesla modules to build one more custom battery, but would like to sell these two first.
ps.
Also have a 12s 44v for a 36v or 48v Gem or golf cart. 225ah also.
The Think has well over 40 inches of space under the front seat. You would probably have to take the center seat support out but it’s not needed, typical Ford, over engineered. I took mine out so the Chevy Volt batteries would fit. The square tube seat frame is more than strong enough. The outside seat brackets may need to be modified to get the 15 inches needed but I don’t see that being a problem.
I’m running 96 volts and I haven’t run into any problems running the higher voltage. You get a little more speed and faster takeoff with the higher voltage.
The two outside batteries sit on top of the frame rails and the four center ones sit lower in-between the frame rails with narrow aluminum cross braces welded in supporting them.
The center section (between the frame rails) where 4 of the 6 AGM eateries sit appears to be ~ 14" X 26.5" x 11.5" (depth or bottom of battery to top). If I use the entire width (between the frame rails and under the seats), the measurement is ~40.5" X 14" X 8.5" (deep / tall - lack of room under the bottom of the seat).
