Hi, I’m Christopher
I live with my wife and a few other animals on our hobby farm in northern Tasmania.
I have a background in electronics/computing and an interest in self sufficiency. I grew up on a farm, and have worked in manufacturing, medical and laboratory fields.
My interest in electric vehicles dates way back. I can remember hearing about the Toyota RAV4 all-electric, and going into my local Toyota dealer to ask them about it. In those pre-internet days they hadn’t heard of it, and had no idea why I’d want one! Looking it up now, it looks like it was sold in the USA only, from 1997 to 2003.
Once I had my own house and land, I wanted to reduce my reliance on imported electricity and fuel. The plan was to use solar power and an electric car. But solar was expensive, and there were no electric cars on the market in Australia at the time. So I decided that the lowest-cost way to start this journey was to start building things myself.
My posts will mostly centre around:
I converted a Subaru Brumby from petrol to electric in 2013. A project vehicle is never finished though, so since then I’ve added different batteries, motor, heaters…
House Battery
I managed to buy some lithium batteries that had fallen off the back of a bus. They were perfect to build into a home storage battery. Now I can store my daytime solar power and use it at night.
Battery Management System
If you are using a lithium battery, you need a BMS! I made my own from inexpensive components. It suits electric vehicles, home batteries and more.