building a solar/electric car

[SaintlyCharBoy]

we are in the preliminary stages of planning a new car.
our old car competed against other big names in the North East section of the tour de sol
we last placed between MIT and Dartmouth college

i did a quick sketch based on what other club members "wanted to see"

(i linked to the pic, as when i previewed it it was friggin huge; anyone know how to resize an img?)

pic of SEVMkII (http://nhtisev.tripod.com//sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/sevsmall.jpg)

if any of you have experience designing suspension/ drivetrain setups, and have any advice, please offer it. we are looking at building unequal A-arms, identical all around for interchangeability (sp?) and mid-motor/RWD

if any of you are interested more information is available here (http://nhtisev.tripod.com)

[ruf]

Is the Tour de Sol the new name for SunRayce? I was on the Texas A&M team that finished 4th. I did the LED lighting on the next gen car, but I think we missed qualifying or something. Woulda been a very fast car.

n/m. Just saw that it seems to be more of a production car competition instead of an all-out solar racer thing. Good luck!

[SaintlyCharBoy]

while you're right the tour de sol is a broader race, it, like many, has several different classes

our club competes solely in the solar/electric range, our car is completely custom, and our current car (sungo) has a range of about 95 mi at 60 mph

we were, at one point, talking about converting a CRX to solar electric power, but scrapped that idea in favor of a completely new rig.

we have a neat little water cooled motor from italy, only about 80% efficient, but pushes out about 130hp, and around 200 lb/ft of torque

also, we are looking into some prototype nickel hydrogen batteries that would greatly lighten our load (over nickel metal hydride)

so, it is custom, not retrofit production, and we are trying to make this car compete a bit better overall, but we have several autoxers on the crew this year, so a lot of attention will be going into the suspension and chassis as well as electrical efficiency.

[SaintlyCharBoy]

ttt