The first room we walked into I saw a very familiar looking person. It was Dane K., an RPI graduate who was president of the RPI Electronics Club last year. I knew he was in Boston this summer, but I wasn't expecting to bump into him on a Saturday night in a place I'd never been before. He was attaching an electric motor to the front wheel of a bicycle, with batteries stacked over the back tire. Next Cam T. showed off an electric powered shopping cart. Apparently after their first test run they decided brakes would be a good idea, so he was waiting on some disc brakes to come in.
After checking out some of the other projects in that shop room, we headed over to the MIT Electric Vehicle Team's garage. We ended up talking to a guy building an electric motorcycle for the better part of an hour. Behind him we could see the team working on stripping down a hybrid car to convert it to full electric. He pointed out the enormous stack of 7,000 high-tech batteries from A123. These batteries cost $80,000, have a high energy density, and recharge in minutes. Then the motorcycle guy offered me a free Monster energy drink, courtesy of Monster, before putting his bike back together and giving us a demo on the street outside. He explained how the bike had to have two types of brakes, because the regenerative braking system wasn't effective at low speeds. He also designed the accelerator control with predefined speeds, so by simply clicking the handle into a position, the bike would accelerate quickly to that speed and then maintain it. Costas, who owns a motorcycle of his own, was having a blast talking to this guy, and I would have loved to spend more time there, but I had to go. It was 10PM, home was an hour long drive away, and I had been up since 6am.
The next day I got this link to this page from Cam T and Costas. It's a time lapse video of the shop, and the three of us appear in the bottom right corner, talking to the motorcycle guy, from 0:36-0:38.
The next day I got this link to this page from Cam T and Costas. It's a time lapse video of the shop, and the three of us appear in the bottom right corner, talking to the motorcycle guy, from 0:36-0:38.
Update 07/28/2009: The project has been featured on Gas2.0, and hit the front page of Digg. Story available here.
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