Engineering Projects/Electric Cars
Idea
editElectric car motors can be almost picked up by one person. Fuel injection, cooling systems, exhaust systems are replaced with much lighter regeneration systems. An old pickup can be converted to an electric car. Some hybrids can be converted. All hybrids can be taken apart and put together.
Another idea: start outfitting a car like Goggle's. Popular Science (10/20, Kane) reports, "Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor and head of the project, and Google engineer Chris Urmson, delivered a keynote speech at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco, explaining how the" Google's self-driving fleet of Priuses work. "The 'heart of the system' is its Velodyne 64-beam laser that sits on the roof of the Prius, creating the 3-D map of the surrounding environment." This "image is combined with existing high resolution maps programmed into the car. Four radars (one for the front, back, left and right) are used to give the car far-sighted vision for handling high speeds on freeways." Also, there is "a camera near the rear view mirror for monitoring stop lights. GPS, an inertial measurement unit, and wheel encoder keep track of where the car goes."
Subsystems
edit- Energy storage
- Regenerative Breaking
- Autopilots