Converting a Ride on lawn mower to electric

[nechaus]

Hey guys,

I Have a friend who has a business in gardening and will soon want me to convert him a ride on lawn mower to electric,

I have a good idea on how he wants it to be done,
Light, easy to charge, monitor battery easily, no balancing charger, bms , ect. But a small light machine that can be moved around easily... ill try and reduce as much weight as i can

Motor, im thinking of using the hpm5000b , i like it because i use it on my ebike, plenty of beef i think.
Controller, prob use a kelly, thinking max 5kw to keep the motor cool, dont want it to chew through the battery, but i want it to be more powerfull than any ICE lawn mower haha
Batteries im going to use a Fully functional bms from founding power. Use it with the lcd so i do not require a cycle analyst for this build.
Lipo 20s and id say it will have to be 24 ah plus using 8000mah zipp 5s bricks


Now I will need to do some research and find out how these lawn mowers work, so i can attach the motor correctly and get it to run like the old one.
We don't have a ride on lawn mower yet but i will look when i know which type i need so it will be an easy conversion.

[nechaus]

id love to make a buggy with x4 magicpies and a lawn mower underneath... I can imagine a super fast lawn mower cutting grass at 40 mph on a large field ( grass flying 10 meters in the air )

haha but im just going to get an old cheap lawn mower and stick to the stock speed

[salty9]

DIY Electric Car has quite a few threads on converting lawnmowers. Here is one: http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43934&highlight=lawnmower

[Hillhater]

Traction drive will be relatively low power ..2 -4 kW, but the mower deck can soak up a lot more depending on size 24"..48" + ??. and what its expected to cut..trim a neat bowling lawn, ? or bash down a rough wet paddock ?
A minimum of 5kW continuous / 10kW peak i would guess for a 48" deck if it to be expected to work reliably.
Battery pack size / duration would be a big consideration for a "work" machine.

[jateureka]

Is there a reason why he wants to convert an existing ICE ride on mower to electric ? I'm just thinking this may be harder and end up being more expensive than buying a purpose built machine, especially if it is for a business.
Eg. The Hustler Zeon featured in the ReNew magazine recently http://www.economymowers.com.au/products-page/electric-mowers/258-2 Claim it can mow a 1 acre block on a charge, but one reviewer said he only gets about an hour use before the battery drains.
The Tandem Power is claimed to be good for about 2 hrs and 3000msqr. http://www.tandempower.com.au/newselectricr.html. It uses a 36V battery with a 500W drive motor and 2 x 900W blade motors.
I'm not sure of the 'real world' performance but something like that may be easier to modify than converting your friends ride on.

If you want some more ideas then check the discussions on the Aussie EV forum regarding the technical side of design http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=1748&title=electric-ride-on-lawn-mower-conversion

Thinking outside the box, this guy built an electric tractor out of an old ride on and uses it to tow a cylinder mower, which means he could use a single 1kW motor. Probably not suitable for business, but a really neat idea http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=36179&hilit=mower&start=0

Living on just over an acre myself, I've often thought how nice it would be to have an electric ride-on charged from my 3.3kW solar system.
I'm interested to see what you come up with.