Battery Vehicle Society

Maybe a tilting design then, so you can lean into corners? That would obviously mean extra weight, so it would depend on how sharp the bends are whether the extra speed you could carry through them would be worthwhile. I can see this could be quite a challenge...

Great to see you're bristling with ideas Malcolm - you do realise I'll nick any that I can....':wink:'
There was a leaning car last year called "poly-ply-lean" - you might find some data on the greenpower site - it was a bit big heavy & slow but delightfully wacky! I think the way forward is like Rpod-s check out that puppy - it's the hawaii 5 0 car, red with an outrigger housing batteries & motor. Get your ideas into your kids' school car mate, like I say I will nick anything useful I see anywhere!!!!

So does this mean you're going to put in a team Malcolm?

By the way I very much like the recumbent. How much did it cost you they are horrendously expensive

have to have 4 wheels and no closer than 500mm seperation across the width of the vehicle

Very tempted to have a go. I don't need much of an excuse to start building more toys. I built the recumbent for my sons, but with a sliding seat so that it would fit grownups (I just about qualify) as well. It's a brilliant way to get around, but I quickly realised I wasn't bold enough to take it on the road among city traffic.

I'll have a look for that leaning car, sounds interesting.

The average speed of the winning vehicle is pretty impressive - 40 mph from a 250W motor is good going, and several others were close behind.

Well if you fancy building a grown up recumbent give me a call!

yes the winning car certainly does not hang around but the cars which were eventually banned would cover well over one hundred laps in the time it covered 55 !!!!!! Having chatted with the man behind them numerous times he's hopefully going to write us some items for Plugged In on his cars and how to build some of the components He's the scrutineer who helped us get through the snags on the day and onto the grid

Go on have a go you know you want to!

The average speed of the winning car at the weekend was just over 30mph. That includes mandatory pitstops and battery/driver changes. The winning car has averaged 32mph over the 4 hrs. The old streamliner distances only look impressive because they used to be 6 hour races - in fact the record distance is about 200miles in 6 hours, which is 33mph. In general top speeds have come down about 5% due to the 'open cockpit' rule.
It's still not bad for a 240W motor! Teams generally run at 200% rating as they effectively have a 600W budget from the battery, and therefore do have to worry about cooling the motor - especially if it's internal: I believe the Bentley entry cooked 2 motors during the race. In my experience the motor die by melting plastic parts, the brush holders spring out accompanied by a terrible smell & lots of smoke - I don't think the magnets fall off!
Bob

I have had my steam photos developed, there are more in the gallery.







Sorry folks I tidied up my photobucket and broke all the links, I cant remember which pictures were here but you can see them all in the gallery, I have mended the links there. MT

MarkTime[/img]

woooh nice photo of JP driving our entry number 4

I thought you would like that one

MT

For those who'd like to see it again it was on Blue Peter this Wednesday and if you don't blink you can see us 3 times LOL

Click here to watch