Zillablog

Recently there have been a larger than usual number of people asking questions well beyond the usual “My car is a A, weighs B and has C components, which Zilla is the best one to use?”.

If you have been directed to this FAQ entry by our support department, then we did not have a simple answer to your design question. We are, of course, happy to answer questions about our product for those who buy direct from us, but have to limit our time expenditures for questions beyond that so we don’t get even farther behind on our production schedule.

As much as we would like to, we can’t help everyone design their EV conversion. Unfortunately, Cafe Electric llc. does not have the engineering resources available to guide the many people who are looking for help with basic vehicle design at this time. It takes significant resources to do this well; time spent in discussion with the user, calculations, and maintaining the ever changing knowledge of which components are available. There are at least a few people that we have heard of offering help with the design of EV conversions for a fee, but not knowing the quality of the offerings they will remain nameless at this time, let the seeker beware.

Here at the Cafe Electric llc. web site, we are attempting to build information resources that will assist people to make their own choices concerning the best combination of components. At first it will all be listed in this FAQ section. It is a slow process. As it grows we hope to find time to put it in a framework that we have for comparing the merits of various component options. This of course can never be fully complete, but we’ll endeavor to improve it gradually as our resources allow. In the meantime we will try to focus new FAQ answers on those questions that we see the most and feel are most important.

Many other resources are useful for designing an EV. We have a “Links” page that lists some valuable resources among which are: The EV List, an excellent place to ask specific questions. The EV List Photo Album, also a great resource since you can see what those who have gone before you have used in similar situations. The EV calculator is decent for constant speed calculations and rough estimates. The motor curves maybe based on the flawed formulas in the “build your own EV” book, so I never use the motor part of the calculator much.

Beyond that, there are many resources on the web. If you find a particularly useful one, we would appreciate hearing of it so we can add it to our links page.

Best of luck with the research!
-Otmar