Rickard Electric Beck Speedster, Руководство пользователя

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Rickard Electric Special Edition – Owner’s Manual
Page 23 of 30
The vehicle uses a DC-DC converter to convert the 120vdc pack voltage to
13.2vdc to operate the auxiliary equipment on the car such as the stereo,
headlights, water pump, and instrumentation. Much like the 12vdc battery in
your ICE car, this is “on” all the time. And there is some minor drain of the
batteries all the time.
If you are going to store the car unused for an extended period of more than a
week or two, you can shut off this DC-DC converter by setting the emergency
disconnect switch to off. This does reset all instrumentation in the car.
Most owners typically plug the car in at night and allow it to charge overnight.
Once you have a 240vac charge port in your garage or driveway, the act of
connecting the cable to the charge port on the car takes a few seconds.
The unexpected result of all this is that your car does have limited range. But
each morning when you go to get in it, it has a totally full tank. And you will
quickly learn that you were actually spending a LOT of time going to the gas
station in your other cars and you never have to do so with the Electric. It’s
just full all of the time. And it is almost unnoticeably easy to “refuel it.”
The charge port was placed just behind the drivers door for a reason. You do
not want to drive the car away with the cord connected. And you will trip on it
getting into the car if you forgot to unplug it.
CHARGING COSTS
Because of the lack of mass production, electric cars can be expensive to
produce using costly low volume components. And we’ve used the very best.
The LiFePo4 cells are really what has made electric vehicles finally viable and
practical, but they too are expensive.
As a result, economy is not the reason to purchase an electric car. It is more a
personal identity statement and a move toward cleaner air and less dependence
on foreign energy sources. And they’re a tremendous amount of fun.
But yes, as it so happens, they are indeed much less expensive to own and
operate.
The electric edition features a 21,600 wH battery pack, of which we will limit
use to about 19440 wH. The vehicle averages 225 wH per mile and there are
some losses of efficiency in the charging process.
As a result, it can take 20 kWh from the wall to fully charge the car. Your
electric bill is based on the number of kWh (kilowatthours) used through your