As of May 5 2009
A message to EV fans and people following my progress:
I get quite a few inquiries about the project halt and fear/curiosity why is not being updated.
Not to worry, the project is alive and well, but few business commitments and unexpected events prevent me from continuing as was planned.
One reason is participating in preparation of another electric vehicle for EVS-24 - the work initially not anticipated. Realistically, this means the Audi will not be touched until at least summer of 2009. Turn out power inverters made by EVISOL don't work as they should, and therefore have to be either repaired or replaced. In two years after the sale EVISOL never contacted me and never attempted to take care of the situation. It's OK not to be able to design right, but it's not OK to charge money for it as for working product. I believe the company now seized to exist.
Good thing is that while all this above is very unfortunate and disappointing turn of events, it does not really slow down my conversion project. While working full time to prepare other vehicle for the EVS-24, I am assembling advanced Lithium battery for it which I eventually plan to use in my Audi. I designed this pack and gained invaluable experience assembling, debugging and working on mechanical integration.
It may become available from Metric Mind Corp. if proves to be cost effective from a business point of view, but I plan to make couple of such packs for both of my EVs - Audi A6 and Honda ACRX regardless. Building this battery takes lots of effort (not to mention money), coordination of electrical and mechanical designs and lots of labor of love, but is so much fun and resulted in so great outcome that I know is well worth it. So I'll refine the design while searching for the drive systems solution.
So the battery construction is what I'm going to describe next.