Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Retro-Tastic Neighborhood Electric Vehicle”.
My name is gary lavrak and my project is a neighborhood electric vehicle. We have a small shop in san rafael, california. It has four electric motors one in each wheel, they’re 500 watts the batteries are lipo 4, 36 volts 48 ampere hours. The vehicle category is actually legal in 46 states. It is controlled by carb in california, which is california air resources board.
The vehicle is not legally allowed to go faster than 30, but it’s legal on any road that goes up to 45 miles an hour. So there’s no freeway or highway permission maker faire has been wonderful. I came in as a latecomer and they treated me like a king. The maker faire crowd reaction has been overwhelming the popularity of what i’ve done.
It’S really proving to turn heads and i think people are coming around with transportation that will eventually be electric. The body on the car is made out of polycarbonate. It is eighth of an inch thick and it is blow formed which is exactly the opposite of vacuum. Forming, if you vacuum form something you draw it over a pattern.
This is nothing more than blowing it up like a balloon, so the plastic doesn’t touch anything. It’S absolutely flawlessly clear. The body is painted on the inside so that it’s like you have an eighth of an inch of clear coat it’s painted inside.
So if you scratch it you’re scratching only the plastic and not the paint. The chassis is made out of 6061 t6 aluminum, the lower body and the upper body are a mirror image of each other. The same pattern is holding down that shape. The car is a standard automotive, you know fully adjustable seat and it’s a delight to drive. The suspension on the car is made out of polycarbonate as well completely flexible, and i have a patent pending on that.
Each wheel has a 500 watt motor that is being talked to by what they call a hall effect sensor, which is nothing more than an accelerator pedal. So the accelerator pedal is talking to all four motors simultaneously, so there’s no problems with synchronizing them uh an electric motor if it has more or less of a load on it simply draws more or less amperage. So when we make a turn, people are asking me: does this wheel have to have some kind of adjustment to go faster or slower, because it’s on the inside or the outside of the circle, and it doesn’t have to do that. I’M having a ball here and i appreciate being here – the exposure is extraordinary and i think we’re going to start selling these and we’re going to see more of them around the communities.
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