Thanks, perhaps the current flowing to the battery can be measured by clip ampmeter?
Because the vehicle does not have an alternator, it should be supplying some power on idle too.
But i am interested in long term experience with your mod, i am affraid the electronics could be confused by this parasitic load (or in general by the current draw).
By curiosity, i asked Tesla about year ago, if is possible to tap to the battery of their vehicles - they wrote "no way".
These are not sold in Europe anyway and all-electric car is not a wise thing to buy (my opinion), and also are far from my budget.
The general scenario is to drive to the flying field, charge the RC heli packs from the CRZ battery and when it becomes low, start the car to charge it back.
It would be really helpful to know the capacity of the CRZ pack, but there is another issue - how long the NiMh pack could hold abuse like this.
Does anyone in US offer rebuilding the pack with new cells?
Maybe that company will have answer to this.
Replacing cells in intelligent units like this also usually involve resetting the internal electronics (good example is laptop battery), so this dream-like solution might be at the end more expensive then my current situation, if there will not be anyone in Europe knowing/willing to do that.
The authorised dealers would kill me for only thinking about this tap.
One warning from the RC world - we use Lithium Polymer cells and the best ones are capable of hundreds of cycles, but due to internal chemical processes, they usualy get old in 2 years, 4 maximum.
The CRZ probably use cylindrical LiOn, these are safer, but the aging also aplies.
So i have real doubt the pack will survive in good conditions more then 5-6 years (without tap), the only chemistry which seems to be good for long term use is LiFeYPO4.
Anyway i at least know now the IOTA and PowerMax units can use DC input - these power supplies are sometimes used by RC model pilots and i did not know that.
It seems about 4 CRZ are available today on local major used car website, pretty low mileage, it seems to be as rare as Civic Type R here, which seems to me is starting to be hard to get in good contition and they hold the high price.
I will definitely incorporate CRZ test drive into my plans when buying new vehicle.
(well, used one, i cannot afford new one)