Fail Of The Week: Commute-Shortening Electric Scooter

November 21, 2013 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

Please don’t judge [Alan] on his choice of vests. This project is from 1999 when it was common to see people rockin’ these threads. Anyone who has ever spent time on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota will know that parking is at a premium. [Alan] had a 12-15 minute walk from his parking garage to his office and was considering a cheaper parking location that would balloon that to 20-25 minutes. But engineers don’t see problems, they see project ideas. He started work on a tiny electric scooter that could slim down his commute. Obviously he did find some success, but it was interspersed with failures that make his scooter the Fail of the Week.

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[Charles’s] Epic “Total-Recap” GoKart Post

October 27, 2013 by Marsh 11 Comments

charlesEVPost

If you’ve built an electric vehicle in the past few years, you probably owe [Charles] a couple of beers. Now you can feel more indebted to him after you read his 17,500-word, 10-part post covering everything you need to know about electric go-kart design. You’ll want to grab a sandwich to keep you company.

You probably recall the Chibikart from posts earlier this summer, which is one of an endless list of EV projects [Charles] has up his sleeve. He’s been teaching MIT students how to build EV karts for a while now, and this total-recap “2.00gokart” novel is [Charles’s] way of sharing the wealth. This is more than a simple how-to guide, though. Instead, it reads like a teacher’s edition of GoKarting 101, with a few brief and important histories, walk-throughs of how the class evolved, exhaustive links to vendors, graphs, videos, and plenty of reference and documentation.

If you have even the slightest interest in electric vehicles, do yourself a favor and give it a browse. There are a couple of videos after the break, and if you need some more motivation, check out the EV skateboard that uses a lot of the same parts.

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Electric Bicycle Hack Is Hilariously Simple

October 8, 2013 by Marsh 40 Comments

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but limited resources give birth to some of the best hacks. [joejoeboom’s] 5-minute electric bike conversion probably can’t drive you into the next town, but it can scoot you around your neighborhood.

[jojoeboom] found a cordless drill at a local hardware store for $15, which he simply zip-tied to the bicycle’s frame. He positioned the drill so the chuck pressed firmly against the side of the bicycle’s rear wheel, creating a simple friction drive system. To create a throttle, [joejoeboom] strapped a spare hand brake to the handlebar and wrapped the brake’s cable around the drill’s trigger. Several carefully placed zip ties hold everything in place and allow the cable to tug at the trigger when the hand brake is squeezed.

Watch the bike poking around in a video below, and for some extreme contrast check out the 102-mph bicycle build from earlier this summer.

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Custom E-Cruiser Has Features For Disabled Rider

September 28, 2013 by Marsh 16 Comments

e-crusier

As [AussieJester] noted in the first page of his build log, most people’s idea of a “custom-made” electric bicycle involves strapping some electronics and a hub motor onto any off-the-shelf bike. He needed a bigger challenge, so he fabricated his own frame to build a stylish electric cruiser. This bike has a 2-speed transmission and a massive Turnigy 80-100 brushless outrunner motor, which pushes out a top speed of 45mph.

You may have noticed what look like training wheels in the picture above, and you’d be half-correct. [AussieJester] is a paraplegic, and needed to guarantee some stability both when transferring from his wheelchair and when coming to a stop. The best feature of this bike, however, is that these small wheels are retractable. A linear actuator lowers them for slower speeds and for mounting/dismounting, but picks them back off the ground once you are up to speed, maintaining a true 2-wheeled experience.

Stick around for a couple of videos after the break: a first-person POV showing just how quick this bike can move, and a demonstration of the actuators. Then check out another EV pioneer in the world of skateboarding.

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Porsche 911 Made Electric

November 16, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 63 Comments

[Kurt] wanted an electric car, and always wanted to drive a Porsche. Killing two birds with one stone, he decided to combine these wishes and convert a 2002 Porsche 911 into an electric vehicle.

After removing the engine, fuel tank, exhaust, radiator, and all the other things that make an internal combustion engine work, [Kurt] installed a high power motor, controller and 72 lithium phosphate batteries weighing in at over 500 pounds. He’s put over 300 miles on the car in the last few months while working out the kinks, but now he’s finally gotten the bugs out of the system allowing him to take it up to some relatively high speeds.

Already [Kurt] has taken his new ride to 100 mph and done a little bit of range testing that told him he should expect around 40 miles per charge in his new ride. It’s not exactly what he hoped, but more than enough for a few trips around town while riding in style.

After the break is a video [Kurt]’s first test drive of his electric Porsche.

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Electric Vehicle Peripheral Controller For The Masses

October 12, 2012 by Mike Szczys 66 Comments

This juicy hunk of printed circuits is an open source controller for the peripherals of an electric car. It’s the product of a capstone project working on a vehicle aimed at urban commuting. There wasn’t a suitable non-proprietary module for controlling a car’s peripherals so the team built their own.

As far as we can tell this is not responsible for driving the vehicle itself. We assume there’s another piece of hardware which reads from the accelerator pedal, drives the motors accordingly, and handles things like regenerative braking. But there’s a lot of other things in a modern vehicle that need to be taken care of as well. Head, tail, and turn indicator lights must be switched. All of the dashboard controls (like the turn signal lever and the wiper blade speed settings) need to be monitored. Something needs to drive the door locks, and a system that reads the door ajar sensors and switches the dome light on and off must be handled. This is where the controller pictured above really shines.

The team has released all of the hardware information. The code is not yet available, but will be as soon as they’ve cleaned it up enough to package the first release candidate.

Maker Faire NC 2012: Electrical Vehicles

June 26, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 7 Comments

Although I had no idea what to expect at the NC Maker Faire, I was pleasantly surprised to see several well made electrical vehicles. One of note was [Lab306]‘s Fox body electric Mustang. Although it would have been impressive by itself, it was made by a high school class and has been featured in several publications. Be sure to check out their excellent website, or the short video of it after the break! Don’t you wish you went to that high school?

Also of note were a few really cool cars seen after the break, including one built from a kit by [Green Cycle Design Group]. The other two were extremely small by traditional car standards and featured very unique designs. Continue reading “Maker Faire NC 2012: Electrical Vehicles” →