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Building an EV from scratch with some college friends

2987 Views 12 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  toddshotrods, 
D
We've started an EV project at my college as part of a club, and we're trying to get a pre-made chassis (for time and safety reasons), preferably a space-frame, recycled chassis from existing cars are excellent as well. I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to where/how to get one, or any other miscellaneous details about the process. Thanks a bunch!

- DSharps
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dtbaker
You're in the right neighborhood, keep reading....

Lots of 5 to 10 year old cars are available for $1000 or less still with fully functional running gear, and even stereos. ;) Just remember... smaller is better, manual transmission is easier, and you can have 2 out of 3: cheap, fast, long-range.
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D
Cool, that's cheaper than I expected. Do you have an idea of how many mass production cars use space frame chassis? I know that monocoque chassis are becoming more common, and since we'd need to modify the chassis probably, the monocoque ones are a little difficult to work with.
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T
Don't know if VW is your cup of tea, but there are lots of parts on the after market, here is a new frame supplier:
http://www.vw-store.com/SQ Tube-Nos.htm
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toddshotrods
What's the budget for the space frame chassis? What type of body or style will cover it? How will the vehicle be used (street, race, off-road, etc)? I could post tons of links and ideas, but it's time-consuming to go through the favorites folders and find them. It would be much faster to target what you need... :)
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D
Yeah no problem - we're going for a street-legal car, with consideration for efficiency and range for the most part. Our final goal is to drive it cross-country, stopping only to swap out batteries (we're designing cartridges that snap in and out for speed). The body we're going to make ourselves, likely out of carbon fiber (this is what was used on the previous project, which had a donated steel space frame chassis). We're trying to make the car lighter and more aerodynamic. As for budget, I'm not sure what the limit is, but we get some school funding which will help.

Thanks so much for helping out!
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toddshotrods
There really are a lot of ways to go about this, so I will start posting links and you let me know if I'm on the right track. One thing you may want to (or already have) consider, with this being a college project, is the possibility of getting full or partial sponsorship. Your goal of driving across country, and using high-tech features such as electric propulsion and carbon fiber, would be a natural draw for them. It would be cheap advertising on a national level.

What about a perimeter style chassis with a roll cage built to your specs? This is the top builder of such, with their chassis being used by everyone from home builders to the top hot rod builders in the nation on high-six figure projects.

http://artmorrison.com/homepage.html


Another similar product (don't be put off by "drag race", they make stuff for handling as well - look at their g-machine parts):

http://www.cachassisworks.com/c-236-chassis-kits-drag-race.aspx


Probably the ultimate in space frame design and production:

http://www.factoryfive.com/
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D
For the cross-country trip, we're definitely looking for sponsors, maybe even some sort of web-casting event as well. It would be really awesome to have a sponsor donate a chassis, but that would be pretty difficult to find I think. We had several rolls of carbon fiber donated from a manufacturing company that had spare, and that's what we used on the previous project, a sort of proof-of-concept car called Renegade.

That cachassis site is excellent, if you have any other resources, I'd love to see them.
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toddshotrods
dsharps said:
For the cross-country trip, we're definitely looking for sponsors, maybe even some sort of web-casting event as well. It would be really awesome to have a sponsor donate a chassis, but that would be pretty difficult to find I think. We had several rolls of carbon fiber donated from a manufacturing company that had spare, and that's what we used on the previous project, a sort of proof-of-concept car called Renegade.

That cachassis site is excellent, if you have any other resources, I'd love to see them.
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Securing sponsorship isn't as hard as it may seem to be. The mistake most people make is asking for stuff. You prepare and submit a full-color, two page, very professional, proposal that tells the company what you can do for them. If you ask if they sponsor, how they go about sponsoring, etc, you've probably lost the deal already. You have a few seconds to grab interest initially, then 15-30 more seconds to lure them in. Compared to traditional advertising rates, sponsorship is a cheap way of reaching potential customers.



A few more:
I thought I had all my chassis stuff in one folder, but forgot that some of it is in a generic "automotive" folder. If I can find any others without burning to much time I'll post them. I think I had more variety than this.)
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C
Have you looked at Factory Five? www.factoryfive.com

All their cars use light weight and strong frames. I believe they're all tubular space frames.
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The Toecutter
What kind of car is this going to be? Sports car? Family sedan? Minivan or Wagon? Hatchback?

I could recommend you prototypes to study for the design of your car's body based upon what you are doing; all of them have drag coefficients of 0.2 or less. It would be a shame to build a custom body and not get the drag to be extremely low; a custom body with low drag is key to getting 120+ mile range EVs with lead acid batteries, and 300+ mile range EVs with advanced batteries.
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DIYguy
looks like a fun project! One thing to consider up front.... make sure you can license the vehicle prior to buying into some custom chasis/frame body combo. I know here where I live... it's next to impossible. Hence the selection of currently produced automobiles that have gone through crash worthiness and a host of other safety compliances that OEM's must achieve. I'm not saying it's impossible.... just make sure. ;) Good luck!
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toddshotrods
DIYguy said:
looks like a fun project! One thing to consider up front.... make sure you can license the vehicle prior to buying into some custom chasis/frame body combo. I know here where I live... it's next to impossible. Hence the selection of currently produced automobiles that have gone through crash worthiness and a host of other safety compliances that OEM's must achieve. I'm not saying it's impossible.... just make sure. ;) Good luck!
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That's a good point. I'm in Ohio where you can basically register anything you can drive safely on the road, and prove is yours. Here, you have to have the basic safety equipment (lights, horn, wipers, etc) and proof of purchase for all the stuff you used to build it, if it's a scratch-built vehicle. A simple inspection and you have a new VIN.

Check into your state and local regulations and procedures first, because it's a pain in the you-know-what to go back and change stuff to match them (experience speaking).
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