Electro-Metro project donates parts to High School EV Race Team!

This afternoon, I was over at the Watertown, Wisconsin High School to lend a hand to the Electrathon Team

Electrathon is a high-school competition to design, build, and compete electric go carts.

I had an e-mail from an advisor this morning saying that their competition was this Saturday, today was the last build day before then, and they just lost their ammeter.

They were looking for a last-minute replacement, so the guy thought of me.

I drove over to the school, hauling along my electric motorcycle to show off to the students.

They got a kick out of the cycle, especially since it used the exact same motor and nearly identical controller as their electric go-cart.

They also had another car there which was propane powered.

Their electric car weighs about 70 lbs without batteries. That's light enough for two students to pick it up and set it on a welding table to work on.

I also noticed a few trophies kicking around from previous wins in the competitions.

The Electro-Metro's Ammeter was mounted to the Electrathon cart with a piece of Lexan. It's really light stuff. Weight is important, as a big part of the competition is an endurance run.

The entire car is completely designed and built by students. In some cases, students designed parts on CAD software and then had the cutting done by a machine shop. Check out the nice shape of this custom steering wheel. Notice the thumb-mount throttle.

Here's a shot of the propane car.
It has some crazy-nice front end suspension on it. The brake rotors, rear sprocket and a few other parts were CAD drawn and then custom-cut. Last year, this car was electric, but they kept burning up Eteks, so they changed it to propane this year.
On the business end of that car,
the brake rotors were drawn by the students and the differential was designed by one of the parent advisors.

Good luck this weekend!

Bring back the Metro's Ammeter in one piece!!!!!