Senior Design
As a manner of explanation for my lack of posts, here is some information about what I’ve been up to.
As part of my engineering degree, I am in the midst of a Senior Design project with two other engineers. We’re working on building an electric vehicle, using a frame from a Senior Design project done 10 years ago (they built a human-powered vehicle, so ours is intended as a next step). The primary purpose behind these vehicles is to reduce pollution caused by taking short in-town trips (tailpipe emissions are worst at a car’s startup, so a lot of short trips in town can be worse, pollution-wise, than a longer trip that allows the engine to warm up and reach its most efficient state). So these vehicles are intended primarily for commuting purposes.
Ok, I think that’s enough explanation for the time-being (if you want more, ask in the comments, and I’ll try to address it in a future post), but here are some pictures of the vehicle that we used for our basic frame.
Here’s a view of the human-powered vehicle before we took it apart (unfortunately, we had already removed the cargo area, so we don’t have any pictures of that):
Here’s a second view:
Here is a picture of the frame after we took it apart:
Finally, a close-up of the steering mechanism used on the wheels so that they tilt and turn:
