Work on the Taxi is still progressing. The mechanical work is mostly done. We have fitted our modified motors onto each of the rear wheels. We will mount the rear brakes once we have finished the electrical cabling to the motors. We may have to tweak the suspension and steering, but we have allowed for this.
We’ve made progress with assembly of the rear swing arms. We’ve:
With that done, we’ve moved back onto the electrical system, simplifying the design of the electrical wiring loom and working out which connectors we need.
We’ve been approached by the CEO of Buddy Platform Inc (http://www.buddy.com), offering the use of Buddy’s services for the African Solar Taxi project.
We’ve made a lot of progress over recent weeks: performing detailed design on the chassis, setting up the workshop, testing joints and materials, and commencing construction of the prototype vehicle.
Here is a full suite of renders showing the design of the African Solar Taxi. We’re ready to start building.
Traditionally, a vehicle’s motor couples with its wheels through a drivetrain which includes a clutch, gearbox, drive shaft, and differential. These components are heavy, complicated and require regular maintenance. Our solution does away with most of the complexity and weight: we will mount hub electric motors in both rear wheels. Continue reading
Our early concepts for the African Solar Taxi were developed using Sketchup, which is great for quick visualisations but is not as good as a proper 3D CAD model. Our industrial design student Andrew has therefore converted our design into SolidWorks, which allows us to evolve the design further, undertake structural analysis and prepare for construction of the first prototype vehicle.
How does it look?
We are making good progress at the moment on a number of fronts, and we’re starting to order the components which have been finalised in our initial design. We hope to start building our first working prototype in coming weeks.
Here is a peek at the current design, including a concept we’re considering for a windscreen and roof structure consisting of a large single sheet of acrylic. Continue reading
Last night we had a good long design session at St Patrick’s Technical College.
The St Patrick’s students have done a fine job building the seating buck (the full scale mockup of the seating layout). It enabled us to hone in on improvements to the body’s shape, size and layout. We made various changes to the seat heights and locations, and were able to better visualise the suspension mounting points, the steering and the centre of mass.
African Solar Taxi 