Li-Ion Electric Kart

This project is part of the preparations for an electric kart project for the KHBO. The goal was to have a basic setup ready that can be used for further development.

A stock frame was acquired and custom battery boxes and motor mount was constructed. On the bottom right a controller and 5kW BLDC motor from GoldenMotor. The controller was a nightmare to work with; it just goes into fault mode at random, does not respect throttle signals and has no way to change parameters at all (later on an USB cable became available but we were already fed up with this ****). Oh and did I mention there is basically no documentation at all? And the few pages you can find on the internet have different wiring on the AMP connector... Some more searching revealed that this controller is likely to be a copy.

Also, the 5kW rating of the motor is in doubt.

The motor drives the rear axle via a nylon belt drive. It is geared for a top speed around 50-60 km/h

Later on, we switched to a Mars 3001 4.8kW BLDC motor and controller from KellyControls, the KBL 48301. The motor is rated at 100A continuous.

This combination worked practically right out of the box!

The batteries and BMS were acquired from GWL-power. There are 16 Li-Ion cells at 60Ah each. Every cell has a small measurement and control unit that is governed by the BMS (RT-BMS 192) to check temp, current and respect over/undervoltage. The emergency button in front of the driver's seat separates the two battery banks. Under normal operation an electromechanical contactor connects the battery to the controller, based on the BMS 'ready' signal. A separate 48-to-12V DC-DC converter ensures supply for all the hardware. Orginally this was done with a 12V lead-acid battery. This proved not to be practical however, as it requires regular attention.