I’ve been interested in electric vehicles for some time now. I have considered them before, but got more interested when I worked in a warehouse driving electric forklifts back in '91. The one I drove was fairly new and for a forklift was pretty fast. I would haul and put up heavy stock 5 or 6 tiers high on pallet racks all night. The battery lasted way more than 8 hours as the lift I drove was used from the shift before. Every once in a while we would change out a battery, but I never remember one getting weak.
I always thought that if a forklift could do all that heavy work for a good amount of time, why couldn’t one power a car?
My experience was 16 years ago and I would say that at least some technology must be have been gained since then.
I have read some topics, but will be looking forward to reading and learning more.
awesome, welcome to the forum, and i agree i did the same thing and it got me really excited to see what they could do… right now its a matter of getting the cars to both go an approperate speed and not weigh so much thats the problem. otherwise batteries have come a long way in the last few years and hopefully we will see themdoing some ground breaking new advancements comming soon.
Bill;
Welcome - we are happy to have your input. You might also want to look at “The Battery Vehicle Society”. It is an English site with a bunch of knowledgeable people. By the way, do you recall just how big and heavy those fork truck batteries were?
tommyt
[QUOTE=Tom Thomson;1220]Bill;
Welcome - we are happy to have your input. You might also want to look at “The Battery Vehicle Society”. It is an English site with a bunch of knowledgeable people. By the way, do you recall just how big and heavy those fork truck batteries were?
tommyt[/QUOTE]
lol those forklift truck batteries are 1 large battery pack typically. I’ve had to deal with them before, and they are a couple hundred lbs as far as i can recall… at least the one i was dealing with. but that one is maybe 8-10 years old?
FEUS has it about right, one battery pack, big and heavy. The best I can remember is they were about 14 to 18 inches wide, about 36 to 40 inches tall and were long as just about the width of the forklift. We changed them out on a roller conveyer system. It would only take as little as 5 minutes to change. But this was 16 years ago and I was impressed with them back then. I’m real interested in how much progress has been achieved since then.
Appreciate the info on the The Battery Vehicle Society. I’ll have to check that out.