2002 Honda Insight EV Conversion

Sometimes I make dumb decisions.
Like buying two cars in a week.

Sometimes I make dumber decisions.
Like having one of the cars I bought be someone else's incomplete and mouse infested project car.

Regardless, I've made my decisions and I have to make the best of them.

For those that don't know, the first generation Honda Insight was the first hybrid to the US market. It was designed for one thing and one thing only: Getting good fuel economy.  Incidentally, by chasing this goal, Honda also managed to make a *really cool* little car.  It's got an aluminum chassis that brings it in at just under a ton and a ridiculous drag coefficient that was the lowest of any production vehicle at the time.  You could also get it as MT from the factory.

Well, what I've got is one of those little aluminum MT cars with the gas parts ripped out and replaced with a three phase motor.  I've managed to drive it around a bit, but  it still needs a lot of work.  Partly because of the smell and partly because of the ratchet straps holding the batteries in and partly because the back window busted on the way to my place, the first part of all of that work is ripping everything out.  So far, I've made a couple of terrible videos about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMSz4hG_Hak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2eMDT56vrg

I only get to work on it about once a week, so hopefully I can find plenty of time to keep another place updated on what's going on.  I've been reading these forums off and on for a while now, and I just casually remembered they existed about half an hour ago. Figured now was as good a time as any to register and join the chaos.

Very cool,  very interesting.  Thanks for bringing your info here!

Well my coworkers are tired of hearing about my bad car decisions at this point, so I figured it makes sense to go to people that understand why I do these things to myself.

I was supposed to be building a 383 stroker for a junky '93 caprice this summer, but then with my mountains of self control, I blew the budget buying this and a diesel truck instead.

So, what's the laundry list:

I'm getting the batteries that came with the car tested to make sure they're worth building around.
Once I have results from that, I can figure out my next steps in powering the thing. There is still no way to charge the car, nor is there a way to safely operate lithium batteries in it.

I need to get the gauges working. At the very least, I need a speedometer.  This should be straightforward, the cluster takes the signal directly from the speed sensor. I just need to get a plug and wire it up.  After that, it probably gets wild.

It would be nice to have power steering again.  Not necessary by any means in a car this light, but nice.

I HAVE to get the interior clean and sealed.
I would LIKE to have something resembling a full interior once I'm done.

The car does not have a clutch as it sits, and I'm not sure it's worth the investment to put one in... but I would like shifting to be a reasonable possibility for a novice driver.  Don't worry... I have a plan...

Right now throttle is just a single potentiometer.  If you've ever used the volume knob and an old amp, you know how terrible this is.  I need to put a proper e-throttle pedal in there.
This quickly devolves into its own rabbit hole.

I would like to do a lot of aero work on the car, as there's a lot to be gained without the ICE there.

That's, I think, the broad strokes to-do list for the car.  Current priority is cleaning it so it isn't miserable to work in. We'll move forward from there once we get the chance.

This is a very cool project!!

Very cool project: thanks for sharing! Welcome aboard, and I'm excited to follow along!

Cool project! Those Volt batteries have potential for some serious umph! It could be very quick if you have the inverter to use them well. What motor and controller setup is in there? 

Seeing you poke around in there with metal tools makes me think of the story of how John Wayland, owner of White Zombie, got his nickname. http://www.evdl.org/pages/plasmaboy.html

I really need to stop putting off getting proper protective equipment for working on this thing.  That was a great read, though. Thanks for the link!  My car is definitely not going to perform like White Zombie.

Yesterday was spent cruising across the Adirondack mountains without GPS (or a worthwhile map) to sort out the busted hatch problem by yanking parts off of a car that I got into a crash in and then gave away six years ago.  I'm proud to say that I only got lost for a few hours, not a few weeks like I expected.
While I was there, the gauge cluster, computers, and wiring harnesses were still around, so I asked the guy if he was going to use them and proceeded to take them as well.  This will give me a good collection of things to keep on the bench and experiment with, as well as the ability to magically change my daily over from 463k miles to 136k miles if I feel like breaking federal law for no gain at all.

The plan for today, if the friend who's house I'm keeping this at agrees, is to install the new hatch and reinstall seat covers before getting started ripping out the dashboard.

UPDATE:

I got the hatch installed, but the guy wasn't there and neither were my hog rings, so I didn't get much else done.


hmmm... that's a big space... I wonder...


no, no, bad, you already HAVE a project for this car.

Oh, hey, a thread I've neglected to update!  Let's talk a bit!

So, I haven't been doing nothing, but it sometimes feels like I'm not far off.  I spent a lot of time writing terrible code for the car that still isn't nearly ready yet.  I'd share, but I don't think anyone wants any more of a wall of unreadable text than what I'm about to dump on you anyway.
I've recently gotten back into the glamorous parts of the project where I can actually share pictures and they mean something to more than 3 people. 

Pictured: Something that means something to 3 people.

I've gotten the interior completely stripped, powerwashed it as best I could, added some sound deadening, and have begun reassembling it. I actually haven't taken pictures of that because I'm dull.
I've also gotten the batteries back from the guy that was testing them, decided to go ahead with them, and have spent FAR too much money making that happen.  In the process, I stopped thinking long enough to push hard on two terminals of the 100V module and spent a second wondering why my hands were all tingly before it all clicked.  Since then, a friend bought me the fancy gloves because I clearly can't be trusted to not be a moron.
I spent a few days in CAD desiging a fancy laser cut metal battery mount that uses the OEM mounting points of the battery pack

And then realized that I'm not even convinced I'm keeping these particular batteries because there are options out there that cost less than what I can sell this pack for, take up less space, and weight about half as much.
So I went back into CAD and designed a more appropriate "Minimum viable product" mounting solution that will get me far enough to decide if I want to keep this pack or upgrade.

2*4's are too expensive, so I intend to use the 2*3's I already own...  and ratchet straps. Don't forget the ratchet straps.

From there I moved on to actually assembling the pack.  The first step? Figure out the pinout for the BMS connectors on the batteries so I can hook up my not inexpensive bit of equipment without blowing anything up (hopefully)

Pictured: Something that means something to 3 people

I then got to work adapting the harness from the BMS to match with the batteries. There was a lot of crimping involved.  I'm glad I bought the tool.


I then build a makeshift coffee table in my living room to preassemble the battery pack on, and checked that my wiring fits


Next up was making all the heavy cables for the battery itself. This is honestly the most fun part of the build so far. Again, I'm happy I bought the right tool.

I then decided to have a look at that fancy BMS I bought to see what I was in for, and damn, this thing is complicated. Maybe it actually is worth the cost

Pictured: Something that means something to 3 people

Finally, we're more or less caught up to where I am now. I'm in the middle of building the control bot that lets one very expensive box tell another very expensive box what to do with the power from an even more expensive box (my apartment)


There's a lot more that's been going on and making more videos is not among it.  Hopefully I'll be able to pull everything into something resembling a narrative for y'all, though.

Other than the 2*3 frame and ratchet straps, this is clearly evil dark magic and should be shunned. Carry on.

How many kilowatt hours of volt cells do you have?

Will you be reconnecting a liquid cooling system to the Volt modules or are you going to try running them with passive cooling?

AAZCD-Jon (Forum Supporter) said:

Other than the 2*3 frame and ratchet straps, this is clearly evil dark magic and should be shunned. Carry on.

It's definitely dark magic and nobody should be more afraid than I...

GIRTHQUAKE said:
How many kilowatt hours of volt cells do you have?

It's just a standard 16ishkWh pack. After testing, it came out to about 11kWh still usable.

GameboyRMH said:
Will you be reconnecting a liquid cooling system to the Volt modules or are you going to try running them with passive cooling?

 That's still up in the air. If I decide I like the car but don't want to switch to lighter batteries with the same capacity, I'll liquid cool. Otherwise they'll be swapped out for passively cooled batteries.  Either way, I expect to put far less of a load on them than they had in the original application.

In the interest of actually giving y'all folks updates, I've been tinkering more with the charger circuit.


Shortly before finishing the buildout of the charge control box

Then I got it all plugged up and configured the BMS. I was really nervous about this because that box is super expensive to replace.

Everything's looking pretty good.

After some fiddling with figuring out my ground wasn't connected and other fun things like that, I got it to start charging

Then it blew a breaker... twice...

Something I already knew is that this charger has adjustable current limits so you can charge to the max wherever you go. Unfortunately it's controlled via a dial on the front.  Naturally, I tried to be clever and work out a way around that dial... before ever testing that it worked in the first place.  Unfortunately, I didn't try hard enough to be clever and just sent it instead.  Now even with undoing my cleverness I can't get current limiting to work on the charger.
Of course the charger is the MOST EXPENSIVE box in the car, worth what the entire rest of the car is, and now it's taken apart on my dining room table.

So now I have to figure out how this thing actually works and be smart enough to undo my past self's attempts at being clever.  Wish me luck.  Past self is the most consistent person I know when it comes to completely berkeleying me over.

So, I've looked a bit closer at the charger, and there appear to be no programmable chips, so I can just replace things without worrying about programming (instead I get to calibrate)

I suspect I killed U14, which compares the signal from the input current sensor to the signal from the pot.  It's a $0.60 chip, but shipping is $10

So what good is a theory without a test?
I went ahead and looked up the pinout

And grabbed a toy from school

That I then used to generate a waveform for testing with

Plucked off a chip I assumed to be good (U9) and took some measurements

Then I did the same test on the chip I think is bad

Luckily, they do two different things.
Annoyingly, the one I assumed to be bad does something resembling what I would expect and the one I assume to be good does something I think is weird.

So, I'm actually getting the hang of posting updates as they happen!  Now that I've said that, I'm gonna ruin it!

Yesterday afternoon, I adjusted the wiring on the motor to work with a higher voltage by doing a Delta to Wye conversion on it. I also installed heavier duty springs and adjustable shocks in the rear so it can handle the extra weight from the battery pack.  I took no pictures of this because I'm scum.

Before that, though, I found a smoking gun!  More scope graphs incoming!  I know scope graphs are what you come to GRM for, so I made sure to get plenty of them.
 

I realized that my test wasn't giving the results I expected because I was probably doing something horribly wrong, so rather than just glancing at the pinout on the datasheet, I actually read it.
Yep, I was being silly. I needed pull-up resistors on the output.  If you don't know what this means, ask, and I'll bumble through explaining it.
I adjusted my test circuit... and got beautiful results from the chip I assumed to be good!

The new circuit

The inputs


The output from the good chip

Then I tested the bad chip...

Well, okay then. Guess the chip isn't bad.  Damn. Gotta dig further.

Next I did some research and read some datasheets on the second closest chip to the circuit that wasn't working.
It's a quad op-amp. Easy enough. I had like a month and a half dedicated to this E36 M3 at school.  I threw together a test circuit and fed it a sine wave.

 

The output I got from 15 of the 16 op amps I tested...


The output I got from amp #2 on U7

HAHAHAHAHA I FOUND IT, I FOUND THE BROKEN CHIP

So I dropped one in my cart on Digikey... $0.58
$6.99 Shipping
... $6.99 Shipping...
So I dropped 4 more in my cart and 5 of that other chip for extra fun.  $5.45
$6.99 Shipping
Screw it.  I'm not going further down this road.  Purchased.

Now we wait for "3 day shipping" just before Christmas.

That is some serious component level diagnostic work. What is your background?

I follow along with lots of things I don't understand. For example, I've been married 22 years.

srsly, this is a cool project, thanks for sharing!

In reply to DrMikeCSI :

Well, most of my professional background is hospitality and food service, but then I got fired, went back to school for mechatronics, and now I fix robots for a living.  I've also done some amount of school for electrical engineering, but it's on the backburner right now as I'm trying to move to a different state.

There are times where I think I'm smart. Then I read things like this thread, and get a hell of a reality check. 

Extremely interesting build you have here. I look forward to more of your progress!

Not really an update on the car, but it likely has some effect on the car:
Through a series of surprisingly fortunate events, I was just "Affected by the ongoing actions" at work and am now remote with no job duties until my upcoming final day.
This means I both have more time for the car and less time for the car, as I need to pack to move myself and the car to an apartment I haven't found in a state 1000 miles away and find a new employer within the next 90 days.
I gotta hand it to my life. It finds a way to keep it interesting.

It may not look like much, but I cleaned and installed the dashboard and put the steering wheel back in for the first time in months.
I also set the seats in the car.  It feels real nice to see the inside looking like a vehicle again.