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Solar Powered Car Model
Inspiration
We where inspired by cars and clean energy. We saw the impact of both electric and gasoline cars on global emissions. Both produce Carbon emissions either directly or indirectly. We all know how traditional gasoline cars produce carbon emissions. However something more unlikely is the indirect pollution from electric cars. We found out that to charge an electric car it takes around 56- 494 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of battery capacity. Bigger cars such as the Tesla Model S/X produce more indirect carbon emissions than smaller electric cars such as a Nissan Leaf. We wanted to find away to make a completely green car using renewable energy.
What it does
With climate change becoming a more pressing issue every day we wanted to find a solution to one of the biggest producers of carbon emissions (CARS/VEHICLES). We designed a car that will use cutting edge technology to help make a cleaner future. Our car is 100% clean and uses Solar energy to run. We store the solar energy in batteries laid at the bottom of the car. This design also allows for a low center of gravity. Then through an AC/DC converter we will power an Induction motor which will allow the car to move. In fact our car will actually be just as fast as most high performance sports cars. Our car will be using 100% renewable energy and provide a cleaner greener future.
How we built it
We built a 3d model of our car in AutoDesk Fusion 360. Originally we wanted to build a working 3d printed model, However due to limited time and resources we decided to settle on a model in Fusion 360.
Challenges we ran into
A big challenge we ran into was providing enough power to the batteries. We found out that our car would only be getting 2 miles worth of charge an hour in direct sunlight. With a targeted range of 350 miles on full charge we found that you need 540, 5x3ft solar panels to achieve this range. This would make our car huge in length and we wanted to find a solution. To fix this problem we found 2 solutions. One was that we are going to build a solar charging network. Since current electric charging stations are built straight into a power grid which most of the times gets its electricity from fossil fuels we find that our solution will still be clean and achievable. The second solution we found is that by building the roof out of many tiny solar panels instead of one big solar panel, will allow the car to receive sunlight from all directions and improve the efficiency of our car's charge per hour of sunlight to 3.75 miles.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are extremely proud of learning how to model in Fusion 360. Neither of us had much experience with Fusion 360. We are also extremely proud of everything we learned about the car market and especially about the impact of Electric Cars on climate change.
What we learned
We learned how to use Fusion 360 and how to model in fusion 360. We are especially proud of learning how to sketch then extrude from those sketches in Fusion 360. In the end we never actually used our sketched/extruded model since we found a better way to model our car. We also learnt a ton about the car industry and how it works. We found out that in the U.S we need about 1.25% of the market to be profitable. Since the car industry is a $80 billion market in the U.S. 1.25% will equate to around $1 billion in profit.
What's next for Un-St8ble
We plan on improving our model. Due to limited time and our inexperience we where still figuring out how to use Fusion 360. We also would have liked to make our model more detailed.
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