Rabbit Lithium Conversion 1

Originally, this car was built and sold with eighteen six-volt lead acid "golf car" batteries, with a nominal voltage of 108 volts and 220 ampere-hours of storage. The batteries weighed in at 1200 pounds, and they completely filled the rear of the car from the back of the front seats to the back bumper. The car was heavy, slow, and the batteries required quite a lot of maintenance to keep them filled with electrolyte and the tops clean. Add to this explosive hydrogen sulfide gas produced during charging, and well, you get the picture.

I had replaced these batteries in 2001, and got OK service from them I suppose, but by 2007, they had lost enough capacity to make the car no longer useful for my needs. The Rabbit ended up sitting in my carport, unused. I had always thought that I would wait to replace the lead cells with something more modern once that technology matured and prices came down, which was happening very slowly. The "plan", if ever there was one, was to purchase a wrecked Nissan Leaf, shred up the ugly body to tear out the battery, and transplant that into my car. Never got around to it, seemed like a massive amount of work.

February 2018, my friend who runs the recycle yard in town, Scott, mentioned that he was trying to purchase a pickup truck that had been converted to electric, but that the owner wanted more for it than he was willing to pay, as he was only interested in the body of the truck, not the electric conversion parts. He asked if I wanted to go in on the purchase to get the batteries. I told him that I already had one car full of dead batteries, and didn't need another, then he showed me a picture of the engine compartment on the truck. What I saw was a sea of yellow cells. Thundersky 160's. I told him that if the batteries were any good, I'd be willing to put out some cash for them. He arranged for us to see the truck, and we drove his roll-back wrecker the 50 miles to the nearby coastal town where the owner lived.

The owner of the truck had been trying to sell it for some time without any interested parties. He had converted it some years prior, and at that time it was powered by 20 lead acid cells. At some point, he had parted-out another of his conversion vehicles and put the Thundersky's in the truck, basically wedging them in with bits of styrofoam and 2x4 lumber. He had been keeping the pack charged, and was confident that all of the cells were in good shape, although the battery management system was in need of attention.

His reason for selling was that while the conversion truck ran, and got him around town more-or-less, it was now possible to go out and buy a production EV, one with air conditioning, air bags, cup holders, and a warranty. He now owned one of those ugly Leaf cars, and his wife wanted to park her Chevy Volt in the garage instead of charging it in the rain.

We haggled for a bit, agreed on a price, and he drove the truck over to the rear of the wrecker. Done deal. We loaded it up, paid him, and backed out of the driveway with a new project.