November 2022 EV SIG Meeting

Agenda

• Introductions by new attendees
• What’s new in the EV world
• Thoughts on Caterham’s plans for EV
• Seven Conversions
• AOB

Attendees:

• John
• Mac
• Ian
• Paul
• Dan
• Andrew
• Stu

Intro’s By New Attendees

• Mac
  • Automotive industry and retired
  • Lotus for 17 years
  • Project manager for a big name EV car project for 4 years - Vice President of Vehicle integration
  • Built a 140 Super Sport in 2012
  • Interested to see if decent EV can be made in such a small package
• Ian
  • Mechanical engineering
  • Retired now
  • Passion for classic cars
  • Has a Caterham CSR
  • PV, solar heating, Powerwall (moved to new house)
  • Model 3 now and i3. Has had a leaf etc
• Paul
  • Mechanical engineer retired
  • 1995 Caterham

What’s New in the EV World

• Bob Laishley's interview in on Caterham's EV plans in Autorcar.
  • General consensus seemed to be that Caterham are known for the Seven and must keep that going in some form.
  • Range considered to be a problem as Sevens are often driven in remote places where the charging network isn’t very good
  • JM reiterated conversation with BobL at Beaulieu
    • Caterham could do EV tomorrow, but…
    • Know that wouldn’t be good enough to have a car that lasted 15 minutes on a track and then overheated and took 2 hours to charge
    • Will wait for technology that can deliver a true Caterham
• Zero-EV Merger.
  • JM is hoping to meet with Zero-EV soon as they are local to Bristol
• Swindon Powertrain's announcement of their battery module
  • Discussed the fact that this probably wouldn’t work well for many classics and certainly not 7s
• Mini conversion saga, here, and how it might affect sEVen projects
  • DVLA are holding back some car’s V5s when the owner notifies them of an EV conversion. They are stating that any chassis changes need an IVA and that they are “radically altered vehicles” also meaning they get a Q-plate and cannot keep their age appropriate plate.
  • This leads to the conclusion that any conversion needs to make no modifications or assume it needs an IVA and subsequent Q-plate designation

Thoughts on Caterham’s Plans

See above

Seven Conversions

• JM shared some animations of EV and Duratec he’s been working on
  • An early EV concept video can be found here: 
• AMRC - ELLI conversation https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=530986689034888&set=pb.100063706834212.-2207520000.
  • JM talked to the ELLI project manager last week
  • JM to visit and report back
  • ELLI project manager has tentatively agreed to give a talk about the project at one of our monthly meetings - all agreed this would be of interest
• We had a long discussion about the merits of front vs rear mounted motor, especially in light of the issue converting a mini highlighted above, the DVLA points system and R100
• DVLA points system https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-registration/radically-altered-vehicles
  • We discussed how DVLA use a points system to determine if it considers a car to be radically altered
• R100 https://unece.org/transport/documents/2022/03/standards/regulation-no-100-rev3
  • At the close of the meeting JM quickly highlighted the United Nations regulation 100 that details how EV powertrains and batteries might be tested. There is some speculation this could apply to conversions and would significantly increase the complexity of a conversion and almost completely rule out the possibility of a home conversion.

AOB

• People thought it would be good to have a place to discuss topics between monthly meetings. JM agreed to set up a WhatsApp group and will email all EV-area members so they can volunteer their mobile numbers if they’d like to take part.(If you're reading this in the future then send your mobile number to ev@caterhamlotus7.club)
• 27 club members have now signed up for the EV SIG area