I am looking for someone or a small group of people that have Karma's that have a dead battery pack's. I understand the electrical architecture enough to attempt to build a new style battery pack that may be able to replace all packs and provide a system that may out last the vehicle. The battery pack that came with the vehicle would be still left intact and a new one will be built for the vehicle. I am looking for a Karma owner that is looking for a second life for their car. This will not be a short process but I believe that it is possible to do.
Looking for Dead Fisker Karma's
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I am looking at a couple of options. I am interested in keeping the vehicle all electric and working with the algorithm of the battery controller to get the most out of the pack. I am not convinced the inverters are the best either and think that they can also be tuned. I would also design the pack so other batteries can be used from multiple suppliers.
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I am in agreement with SoCalGuy, I would like to have a longer range battery and still maintain the ICE backup. I would be interested as well.
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100 Miles Plus Battery Range for Fisker Karma
A 100 mile plus battery option with extended range would be a game changer for the Fisker Karma. I would be all in for that option.
I'm convinced that when General Motors and the other auto makers complete there research and study of Tesla and Elon Musk that they will conclude that Tesla's superior battery performance of 200 miles plus is one of the major factors contributing to there success.
Tesla is telling the world what it takes for Electric Vehicle success. I think the message is loud and clear that EV manufactures need to step there game up when it comes battery performance, 100 miles plus for EV's with extended range and 200 miles plus for pure EV's. Plain and Simple!!!
Samuel
A 100 mile plus battery option with extended range would be a game changer for the Fisker Karma. I would be all in for that option.
I'm convinced that when General Motors and the other auto makers complete there research and study of Tesla and Elon Musk that they will conclude that Tesla's superior battery performance of 200 miles plus is one of the major factors contributing to there success.
Tesla is telling the world what it takes for Electric Vehicle success. I think the message is loud and clear that EV manufactures need to step there game up when it comes battery performance, 100 miles plus for EV's with extended range and 200 miles plus for pure EV's. Plain and Simple!!!
Samuel
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While I agree with you completely about Tesla's superior range being its critical success factor, the challenge is that no manufacturer, including Tesla, can currently deliver a 200 mile range EV for $40K. So what we get instead is $40K+ BEVs with 20-25kwh batteries and a 100 mile range. Because Tesla targeted a $70K+ price point they can afford to include enough battery to get 200+ miles on a single charge
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The biggest wild card in all this is the battery costs. I know people that drive 40k miles/year. Tesla claims that the useful battery life is ~100k miles. If battery prices don't come down in the next few years these cars could be very expensive to keep on the road. Even at $200/kwh that is still 17k. Tesla has also been hush hush on the future battery replacement program (with all its caveats). This is something to keep in mind. If you are a road warrior you could have a rude awakening if you purchase a vehicle with a large battery (when it comes time to replace that battery). It is much more cost effective to have a PHEV solution until battery prices come down to sub $50/kwh prices.
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I agree with Smooth on his points, but if someone can deliver an upgraded pack for the Karma then even gets 80+ miles, that make the Karma a more compelling Car. But what i think is missing from the discussion, is that without a company to back it up, it's a worthless and costly endevour -- Telsa key success factor beyond the 200+ range is that people are conviced it's now a stable company, had fisker shown stability, that in itself would be a big plus for the Karma even at 40+ miles of battery range - we bought it ;-)
at the current battery costs the optimum arrangement (more for the buck) IMHO is a 100Mile battery only with a small ICE genset. the Karma does not need a heavy turbocharged motor generator set. Should have gone the BMW I3 way. 100 miles on electric and an ICE to get you home at a sustainable 65 Mile speed. Fisker built a car to keep up with 100 plus mile an our sustained speed. Find me one driver in the US that can use it and I will show you one with his license revoked. Tesla is not perfect either. It is selling cars that can go 200+ miles to people that hardly ever drive pass 100miles a day The rest of the time people are just driving around with an extra 700 pounds of battery capacity they do not need. BMW has the right blend. too bad they went for ugly.
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Gasoline prime movers do not make for very good gensets. They require more maintenance, are inefficient, require higher rpm's to generate power etc. A small diesel would be the best as the power comes very low in the power band. Fisker built an extremely heavy vehicle thus the requirement for the 175kw generator/193kw prime mover. Furthermore the Karma is a performance vehicle and the powertrain in the vehicle is capable of far more than what is currently available to us. Nobody is going to spend 100k on a car that has the pedigree of a Prius (slow, handles like crap, not capable of hitting triple digits etc).
The long term cost of large capacity BEV still has not been vetted completely. Tesla said that you would be able to pre-pay for a battery at a lower cost (like the Roadster) but I have not seen any news about this in the past 6 months or so. I know people with 35k miles on their Model S. What will happen in 18 months or so when they have close to 100k and the battery capacity diminishes to <70kwh? Yes the car will still work, but according to Tesla the battery has reached the end of its useful life once it gets between 70-80%. Price still need to come down 75% for BEV to make sense. Until that time a battery pack with a gen-set makes a lot of sense if you plan on keeping your car long term. The battery cost may not be a huge problem for current well heeled owners but once we TSLA starts to produce a $35k BEV in a few years battery costs have to be down to a 1/4 of where they are at now. If not there will be a lot of disappointed people. Not to mention resale will not be very good. Hey maybe we will see a VL Model S
To get back on topic though; you could use 18650 cells in the Fisker enclosure (assuming that the thermal management system in the Karma could be modified to handle these cells without an increase in cooling footprint) and double the energy density quite easily. Probably 90 "Karma" miles or an honest 75.
As a Electrical Systems/Battery Release Engineer I have worked on many Hybrid programs and understand the complexity of the battery pack and the integration of it into the vehicle. There were in my opinion some missed opportunities and some system items that were over looked due to the timing to get the vehicle on the road. The goal of this project is to produce a replacement battery pack that has a range of 120 miles. I do believe based on my experience that this is a realistic goal.
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Do you have any specifics on the cell chemistry, thermal management, energy density, and discharge rates? Do you plan on changing out the 3.3kw charger with a larger capacity charger? What size cells do you plan on using? How many Ah?
I do have specifics on the cells that I have used for other programs. I will also address the charging system as well. On other programs we have used a larger Level 2 charger to charge faster. All of this information will be part of the engineering development.
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Follow up question, the 120 miles range would be if you made the Karma all electric (ie with no range extender)? Or would that be 120 miles of battery range plus the option of another 180-220 miles using the range extender? The latter, as I have said before, would be much desired!
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Dahall09
What type of battery technology? How much would this cost to adopt to the Fisker Karma? How much additional wieght would this add to the Vehicle and when could we expect the first conversion?
Samuel
What type of battery technology? How much would this cost to adopt to the Fisker Karma? How much additional wieght would this add to the Vehicle and when could we expect the first conversion?
Samuel
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996 Posts
can you provide more details about your background and your other program?
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