The Peugeot 106 electric is one of the first electric cars, produced between 1995 and 2003. It is a remarkably simple car, containing just the bare necessities.

Compared to combustion engine version:

• It has a fully galavanized frame
• The fuel gauge is now a power meter (“econometer”)
• The tachometer is now a battery charge meter
• It has no gear lever, not even PRND like cars with an automatic transmission. It only has a “Reverse” on/off button

Buying my 106 electric

I bought a 106 electric for €1900. It is a white 5-door version. It is not in a driveable state, but it is physically in good condition. This particular car was imported to the Netherlands in 2016 with 31954 km. In 2020, it was sold with 69 022km and it has not driven since.

The person we bought the car from was seemingly unable to tell the truth. He insisted on his ficticious numbers even where easily verifiable otherwise. Like the odometer (“only 7000km”, actually 69000), the maximum speed (“easily 140km/h”, actually 90km/h), the power (“80pk but it’s electric so even more”, actually 27pk). He claimed everything about the car was original and that it had not been “messed with”. We quickly spotted a 3D-printed housing with a touch screen, stuck to the dashboard with double sided tape. When confronted with this he again insisted this was a completely original part. This was a strange experience. It felt like being scammed. Still, I wanted the car and I think I paid a fair price for it, ignoring any false promises by the previous owner. I fully expected needing to do major repairs, like replacing the batteries with LiFePO4. It was only important that the mechanical parts and interior were in good condition, which was the case.

Disassembling the batteries

On the dashboard we noticed a 3D-printed housing with a touch screen.

It turns out this is part of the EVMS2 (Electric Vehicle Management System), a product by Zero Emission Vehicles Australia, a business that has unfortunately closed down. They made, among other things, different versions of these EV magement systems for the purpose of converting cars with a combustion engine to electric. The monitor connects to the EVMS2 Core, which connects to BMS12 modules for monitoring cells. We went looking for these modules.

The car has 3 battery compartments (picture from the sales manual).

Our suspicions were confirmed when we opened up the first battery casing. We saw 4 CALB LiFePO4 modules. For some reason there was also an unused current measuring shunt. The cells are at 0.0V, so they are completely unusable. We can hopefully reuse the BMS12 modules. The EVMS seems to be a perfect fit, it would be great if we don’t need to spend money on a new BMS.

Enthousiastically I unscrewed more bolts, only to find out that I accidentally unfastened a beam to which one of the two motor mounts was attached. The motor was now partially resting on some cables and the lower battery… After removing the lower battery we could attach the motor properly again. Fortunately, I did not cause any damage.

Finally, it was time to remove the rear battery.

This battery was assembled most “professionally”. It had nice plastic separators and the batteries were tightly held in place using foam. There was even an attempt at compressing the batteries, using threaded rod and aluminium parts. The aliminium parts are not strong enough to excert much force on the batteries, but still I appreciate an attempt was made.

Someone really put a lot of work in building these batteries. It is unfortunate that they are now at 0V and have to be thrown away. The previous owner (not the person who built these batteries) did not drive it at all for 6 years, so it is likely that the batteries just slowly drained flat.

The original batteries were 20 x 100Ah 6V nominal (12kWh). There are no markings on the new batteries, but I guess they are 200Ah LiFePO4. That gives 44 x 200Ah 3.2V (28kWh). The new batteries at 140V nominal had a higher voltage than the original batteries, with 120V nominal. Hopefully they didn’t overload the motor and cause damage.

Testing the electronics

Before investing in to new batteries, we want to see if the motor and electronics still work by hooking up 3 10S Li-ion e-bike batteries in series. Fully charged that gives a little over 120V which should work. These ebike batteries can easily provide 30A which should be enough for a brief test. It is not possible to hook up batteries with a BMS in series. If the mosfets in one BMS switch off, the mosfets in the other BMS modules get a high voltage across them and may blow up (I speak from experience!). Therefore, we will bypass the BMS for this test.

work in progress, last updated 2025-01-17