EVT's Back!

hey guys!

MIT EVT is back! After EVT's adventure in the Isle of Man it was time for EVT to look for new frontiers! During summer of 2012 the planning for 2012-2013 EVT started. Lennon and a couple of new guys started working on a project that would test our Electric Vehicles in a new way: extreme range. Our current challenge is to travel from Boston to New York City in a single battery charge. While the eSuperBike demonstrated that we can build EVs that travel extremely fast for a short amount of time, the BOS-NYC project will demonstrate we can put together vehicles with an extreme range.

~230 miles to NYC!

EVT had a very successful recruiting session during the beginning of the fall semester and we are proud to have over 10 active members contributing to the new project. (Photo of the team coming soon!). Each week/couple of days a different team member will be updating the blog with his/her contributions to the project. For today let me give you guys an intro to the hardware what we'll be using.

The plan as it stands is to put a hub motor on a bicycle which will be hauling a trailer full of batteries (120kg of batteries to be exact). We will be reusing the eSuperBike batteries (about 12kWh of energy, for comparison the 2013 Chevy Volt has a 16.5 kWh pack). We have already purchased an adequate trailer, here is a picture of it attached to my personal (non-electric) bicycle.

As for our bicycle, we have been fortunate enough to be put in contact with Geoby, a company that fabricates great electric bicycles. They were kind enough to lend us two of their models to experiment with. We'll be modifying the bikes in the next couple of weeks/months to get them ready for our NYC trip.

Thanks Geoby! (for more info on Geoby bicycles please visit: http://www.geobyev.com/en/index.aspx)

An extremely important aspect of our project is the modeling and energy budgeting aspect. We have a subteam working specifically on doing numerical simulations and path optimization for the final trip. They soon will be making a blog post about their work! We estimate that we should be able to "launch"  the EV sometime during the spring season (when is gets warm again!).

I hope this is enough info. to give you a good idea of what we are trying to accomplish with EVT this season. If you have any questions about the team, sponsorship or how to get involved please email:
 evt-contact@mit.edu.

Have a great weekend!

-Roberto for EVT