Have you ever wonder how long the batteries of a DIY electric car will last? If you are doing your own electric car conversion project, the cost of buying the batteries for your EV will take up a large portion of your budget. Wouldn’t you want to know how long the batteries will last before you have to replace them?
There is no exact answer to the above question. Different homemade electric cars will have different life span. It all depends on how the batteries are being used.
If you were to drain the battery bank and recharge them many times in a week, generally, the batteries would have a shorter lifespan.
Here’s an example, if you have 15 units of deep cycle batteries on your electric car and you use your EV for daily driving, you may have to recharge the batteries every night in your garage.
If you were to install 25 units of batteries on your EV, with the same driving usage, you may only need to recharge every other day. This means you cycle through your battery bank lesser and in result the batteries will last longer.
Should you install more batteries on your DIY electric car? When your battery bank has more batteries linked together, it would have more stored power hence does not have to be recharged so often.
But more batteries also means more weight on your EV. The key is to find the balance between weight and power availability from the batteries. Unfortunately, this is no easy task.
The best option, if you have the money, is to invest in premium grade deep cycle batteries for your electric car. They are more expensive, but they are capable of storing more power therefore you need to recharge less often.
DIY Electric Car Conversion Tips
Looking for more DIY electric car conversion cost saving tips? If you are, check out Gavin Shoebridge’s Electric Conversion Made Easy e-book.
Gavin is from New Zealand and is well known for converting his old Mitsubishi Tredia into a pure plug-in electric car in his garage.
During his EV conversion project, Gavin did have much money and had to be very creative coming up with ingenious ways to save cost on his EV. Some of his clever ways were included in his EV manual. For more information, click on the link below.