VW Passat B4 EV Conversion

[YLogvin]

I'm in the middle of converting my good old VW Passat B4 to EV and finally have some good progress to share.

I bought this car a long time ago and quickly fell in love with this beauty. This isn't my first EV conversion project, some years ago I converted ZAZ-1103 to electric power. The project was fun, learned a lot while making it.
Another EV conversion project that we did quite some time ago was a Ukrainian Niva conversion, which turned out really great.

Challenges
This time, besides transition to electric power, my goal here is to keep all car systems in working condition. Starting from the power steering, power-assisted brakes, air conditioner and so on...

Why Passat?
You may ask "Why Passat"?
Well, everything in this car is really well done. It has a quite advanced configuration for its years. Air conditioner, heated seats, airbags, ABS, it has practically everything you need.
At the same time, this car is quite simple. It doesn't have a central computer, so it'll be relatively easy to make all these systems work.
Of course, there will be some challenges, but nothing too complicated.

Main components
- Battery pack - 2P26S, 200Ah NMC ~20kWh
- An asynchronous motor with the copper rotor
- Curtis 1238 controller 84V 550A
- Flatpack2 charger
- BMS A1109 + A11039G2

Estimated range
I'm planning on doing two stages:
- At the first stage, it's going to be somewhere around 120 km at 20 KWH.
- For the second stage, I'm aiming to get 300 km out of this beauty. But we'll see when we get there, fingers crossed.

Progress summary
For someone who wasn't following along on my YouTube channel, I'll quickly sum-up my progress to date:
- Oct. 9, 2020: Power steering is working
- Oct. 30, 2020: The motor is installed and working
- Nov. 13, 2020: Heater and air conditioner installed
- Apr. 18, 2021: First Test Drive

Plans for the future
Going forward, my plan is to ensure stability and operability of all standard vehicle systems like power steering, power assisted brakes, air conditioning, ABS, etc.

Here's my first test drive video:
P.S. English captions available

Let me know what you think, I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

 

[YLogvin]

Hey everyone. Wanted to share my battery experiments progress. Took a road trip a couple of days ago, went to visit my parents. Got encouraging results: 240 km on 40kWh test battery. I was riding at an approximate speed of 70 km/h. A utility trailer loaded with a weight of 100 kg takes approximately 25% of the available mileage. Looks like my goal of 320 km on a single charge is not as far away as I expected!

 

[brino]

@YLogvin

Is this still on the 48V batteries?

-brino

 

[YLogvin]

@YLogvin

Is this still on the 48V batteries?

-brino

No, now it's 100 V 25 cells (25s).

 

[hman]

If the cat is happy, the trip is happy

 

[YLogvin]

Made a little overview of my current DIY battery pack setup.
We'll take a look at how I assembled, installed, and tested it. The battery pack now consists of two battery modules. The first battery module is about 20 kWh and the second one (temporary) is also 20 kWh, which gives me 40 kWh total capacity! You'll see how I assembled and installed the battery from scratch. Also, we'll talk about the battery cells with NMC chemistry that I use, two possible ways of BMS installation and data bus wiring.