Gloucester Clean Energy Fair 2015, Porsche Appearance!

The 1976 Porsche 914EV recently made an appearance at Gloucester's TownGreen2025 Clean Energy Fair! Read more about the event here.

A handful of team members made the trek out to the event, where we got to display our Porsche as well as the electric ATV alongside the new BMW electric i3!

The Porsche was featured prominently right at the entrance to the Gloucester High School.  As people from the community entered the building to see both exhibits of research projects and vendors for green businesses at the event, we were able to tell them about the Porsche, our current Opel conversion project, and the work we do as a team.

We also had a great opportunity to check out the new BMW models!

The day's events made for an awesome team bonding experience, and it was great to see how well-received our vehicles were at the event.  The newer team members had a chance to learn a lot of info about the Porsche project as well.  We taught them the controls and made time for some driving lessons through the parking lot as we were clearing out!

Energy Night!

Last Friday we had the opportunity to be part of MIT Energy Night for the second consecutive year!

We took the eSuperbike for its yearly crawl down the elevator as well as the pocket bikes and the trike/trailer. The event was a lot of fun and we made many important contacts in the energy industry. Here are some pictures of the event.

michelle and john 

rango talking electrons

moving the esuperbike

jubilant joey on the trike

Visit from WTP

The girls from the Women's Technology Program visited us today!

We had fun teaching them the basics about EVs and why they are the future of transportation! Yay for outreach!

credit for Dr.  Barbara Hughey for the photo!

TechFair 2013!

EVT participated in MIT TechFair 2013!

We took our eBike and the pocket bikes! We even teamed up with MITERS and did an EV parade around the building.

Lauren on the eBike!

Commencement

A big day in the life of every MIT student (and their parents)... commencement. We didn't have too much attrition by graduation this semester, but that is coming soon enough. Fortunately each new semester also brings fresh new faces to the team.

We worked hard Thursday to get the Porsche looking its best and get the tabletop regen demo working. The Porsche got a wax and a good wheel cleaning. Pictured with the Porsche here is Lennon's electric motorcycle (http://www.electricmotion.org/)

Outreach Demo Work

Shane and I worked on the electronics and wiring of the outreach demo. The demo is a tabletop demonstration of regenerative braking, using a DC motor and flywheel controlled by an accelerator pedal. First we used Shane's TI-based microcontroller board, but eventually switched to a PIC. We also took the ammeter and shunt from the original Porsche conversion kit (which we're not using) for visual feedback on the current flow. In the lefthand picture, you can see the Edgerton electronics lab set up while we were testing and troubleshooting it. On the right, you can see the (almost) completed electronics panel. At the same time, the Porsche UROP crew was building the enclosure for the flywheel and the main display console.

Here's a picture of something we found humorous in the original wiring of the demo. Can you tell what it is?

Somerville Green Living Fest

Saturday we took the car to the Somerville Green Living Fest.

There were a bunch of other 'green' vehicles there, including a biodiesel car and a school bus/RV converted to run on grease. A guy from Herb Chambers BMW was there with a diesel and Prius, and suggested we talk to Herb about helping the team, since he owns a Porsche dealership.

Right about closing time, it got cold and windy so we packed up in a hurry in case it started to rain. We had some issues with the transmission (and possibly other things) on the drive home. Each time we started out from a stop the car seemed to behave differently, sometimes it would have nice pickup and other times it would be really sluggish, as if it was still in second. At on

e point, we were driving like 35 in "first" gear, which seems totally unlikely given the motor is limited at 3000 RPM right now.  Unfortunately the laptop's battery was dead so we didn't get any data to figure out if it was purely a transmission issue, or if the DMOC was throwing a hissy fit, that shouldn't be a problem in the future, once the data logging is built into the cRIO.