Road Trip

     Today all of us met at the campus at 7:30 am in order to depart at 8:00 am and get to Austin in time. We all sat in the van pondering up questions to ask Chris, who is going to give us a tour of what they do at 'Revolt' and how. We thought up questions about the batteries, how are they connected, and also about the battery management system. We were a few minutes away from Revolt when we decided to have lunch somewhere nearby (can't build a car on an empty stomach). Looking for places to eat we
discovered that in-N-out had opened in Austin a few weeks ago, and in seconds we all agreed to go there.

     After having one of the best burgers in town we headed over to Revolt to meet Chris. Upon our arrival Chris gave us a little tour on his work space and what he was working on currently. He had a finished Toyota MR2 waiting to be picked up by the owner, a Porsche 911 which was already an EV but was going through some battery upgrades, and a bike that he was working on. The Porsche 911 that he was working on was being upgraded to lithium (LifePO4) batteries. One of the interesting things that he showed us was  the Battery Management System (BMS) he was working on. To make it a simple and affordable system he used 'bust bars' to connect all the cells and used fuses to know which battery was blown out.

    Also he suggested to arrange batteries in a series instead of parallel so all batteries get the same flow of current when charging. Another fascinating thing he showed us was the Zilla Controller connected to a lot of other stuff such as the shunt, fuses, circuit, and wires. The interesting thing about it was how neatly it was arranged into one piece. One of the questions we asked was about installing A/C and a heater in the car. He recommended that we keep AC if it's 34 a and recommended making our own heater components if we want the car to have a heating system. He wrapped up his presentation by covering the basics such as lighter the car better. We left Revolt trying to absorb all the new information that was given to us and made our way back to Houston.