Regarding UNECE R100 (aka. "E100-sääntö")

I have been talking to the local vehicle inspector about the UNECE R100 rule, also known in Finland as the "E100-sääntö". I thought it would help fellow converters in Finland to share what I've discovered.

As you may or may not be aware, the R100 is required from all conversions done in Finland. The local inspector whoever doesn't know anything about electrics, so what you need to have is someone with the proper qualifications to check the vehicle.

The next question is which version of R100 do you need to follow. The answer depends. Any vehicle must adhere to a version. Even if it's 1961 VW Beetle, you have to pick one to follow. There wasn't a R100 paper then, but nevertheless you need to follow one.

For a 1997 vehicle like mine you could go with the version that was in effect at the time of the first registration of the vehicle. That would to my knowledge be the 1995 version. However I can't find a version of it in finnish and the 2002 version, strangely published in 2009, seems to have pretty much the same text. So I'll probably go with that. You can always use a newer version.

What you don't want to do is pick the fresh August 2013 version. It seems to have some horrible requirements for the battery box construction, testing and so forth. Just goes to show that the OEMs are really trying to do everything in their power to stop people from building their own EVs.

All of this of course only applies to M and N class vehicles, or cars and vans. Motorcycles have no such requirements as far as I know. Unless of course they're new enough to require EMC testing.

As for the paper itself I still maintain that you should probably only be concerned of section 5, since it's the only section which really lists the requirements proper. The rest of it is definitions and type testing approval crap, so I believe you can ignore that. YMMV though...

ps. I've prepared a document with checkboxes to give to the electrician. It's in finnish. If you'd like a copy, throw me an email. The address is at the top the blog. It is still untested however.