I want to add an electric motor and some batteries to get better gas mileage around town. Has anyone done this mod yet?

 

It has only taken automakers billions of dollars and thousands of man hours to get this to work. Im sure its something you could knock out in your garage in a good weekend.

 

That is not a mod. It is a complete reconstruction.

 

To be honest, right now I can only convert Toyota Prius, and For Escapes into Plug-in Hybrids, or any vehicle, into an all electric vehicle. The problem with all electric vehicles is range, so that is where the aftermarket kit comes in.

I have a few ideas on how to do it with a F150, but I did not want to reinvent the wheel. There are a few ways to go about it, and if someone was already making a kit, I would not have to redo all the technical stuff.

It only needs four main parts.
1. A battery box. (Tool box in the back?)
2. An electric motor place in the drive train.
3. A motor controller to turn the motor or get power from the motor during braking.
4. A CAN computer to listen to the truck to know if it is accelerating or decelerating.

I’ve done it all before with other cars and you don’t take anything away from the truck. Downside is you might have to add 300lbs to 500lbs of weight.

 

Is this some type of joke?

 

*a more serious post*
Hmm... I bet you could take a 2wd truck and mount a full time 4x4 transfer case in it. Put an electric motor where the front driveshaft would go.. It could then assist the motor/power the vehicle.

 

It might be easy to do it with a 3000lb car but with a 6000lb truck? That's a lot of weight to move. I'm sure its possible but not in your garage with just those 4 parts. You would need to fill the bed with batteries or go and buy quite a few of those Prius batterie$$$. Then you would need to completely rebuild the ECU not just bolt on a CAN computer. Oh and don't forget you need to get these electrical motors to turn the transmission. There are a million angles you haven't thought through yet. And even if you did fill the bed with batteries, rebuild the ECU, get all the motors in place, and somehow get it to work with the transmission, you would have a range of a couple miles.

Good Luck

 

No joke, just some BS from someone that clearly doesn't understand the magnitude of the task.

 

No! I build this stuff. I know you have got to have guys on this site that could take apart their truck and put it back together with their eyes closed. Again, there have got to be some here that know every part of the F150’s electrical system.

I am sure there is some place to mount an electric motor along the drive train, and I know someone here most know all about the error codes on the CAN. (That diagnostic connection under the steering wheel.) It doesn’t just give info at a repair shop. It can give you data about the performance of your engine and truck full time it you have the computer to decode it. I have one that does it full time in my car.

This is not a joke, and I would never want to reduce the performance of any car. This would be an add on to give the drive train more power that does not use gas. More importantly, less foreign oil!

 

Good luck.

 

All I can say is I understand your skepticism. 1. I am a new poster. 2. You have not seen this technology before. 3. A big misconception is that a “Hybrid” has to be small.

Look, I want to thank you for your time. I’m not here to argue. I think the F150 would be a great next project for me because it is a great truck. It does it’s job day after day reliably. However, I have had more people contact my shop wanting to convert standard vehicles to Hybrids then I have had requests for hybrids into Plug-in hybrid conversions.

If anyone is interested here are two conversions already working on the road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v09_uTp08zg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icipzlaabqg

 

The first conversion is already a hybrid...
The second conversion was built from the ground up with the intention of being a hybrid...

The F150 is neither...

 

Zaairman,
Thanks, I just saw your post.

That might work, or if I could mount to the flywheel with the motor to the right or left of the transmission, not in the engine compartment. I have known people to even mount an electric motor on some delivery trucks directly on the drive shaft.

A simple circuit board with a CAN chip could tell the motor controller to assist during acceleration and know when the brake pedal is being pushed to recapture some of that energy.

This task could seem overwhelming but in it's simplest form it is just a battery and a motor. However, a really powerful motor, and a few really big batteries. I make my own cabling so that and any low power wire harnesses won’t be a problem.

The goal here is to figure out how to make this as much of a "bolt on" addition as possible by using existing bolt holes on the undercarriage. I might have to raise the truck too to maintain clearance but these electric motors only have to be big enough to assist moving the trunk and they don’t have to move it all by itself, so they are not as big as you might be thinking. However, they are bigger then a bread box!

 

When engineering something new you should keep it as simple as possible. Why complicate things with computers when you can just use a simple throttle position sensor and a brake pedal switch. No CAN needed.

 

NoLongerJeepin,
Here is a link to a new article with a video that shows how this is done. If you get a chance to watch it you will see the size of the motor needed and they talk about the control system.


http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news...1/detail.html#