I just want a simple car. One without extraneous functions.
My old boss bought a brand new car that was in the shop for two of it's first four weeks. The issue? The capacitive touch sensor that operated the motorised glove box door was activating automatically because it was being confused by dust.
My shitty 15 year old VW's plastic glove box door has a metal latch and had never experienced this bug.
There certainly are places where technology and electronics can improve a car, but replacing one of the most basic, reliable mechanical functions such as a latch is arguably stupid. It's just adding numerous more failure points. It's form over function.
My shitty 15 year old VW's plastic glove box door has a metal latch and had never experienced this bug.
Heh, my 40 year old Deutz tractor has a metal latch on the glove box, and it will randomly flip open and hit me in the head while working in the field.
I would still prefer it over the motorized system you describe
I wonder what's the fastest you could go on tracks? Apparently a record was set in 1979 (121.9 km/h, 75 mph) and never broken since as far as i can tell, or at least Guiness doesn't seem to know anything about it.
Fellas, we need a tank, a couple V8 engines, and a case of beer
There actually exists an open source community for reverse-engineering EV motors, inverters, battery charging modules, BMS, and everything else necessary to build a DIY car from scrapyard components: https://openinverter.org/wiki/Main_Page
I guess that depends heavily on what you consider cheap... And how fast it's supposed to go.
A friend of mine started scrounging up various battery packs from e-bikes and e-scooters. For some reason these battery packs "degrade" to the point where you have to replace it to continue to use your e-transport thingy, but all the cells inside are still perfectly healthy, so he built a battery backup for his house out of scrapped e-bikes batteries.
Apparently many bike shops have stacks of the out back that they basically give away for free as it saves them a trip to the recycling station.
The motor is probably not going to be terribly cheap, and the motors on e-bikes and such are likely not powerful enough...
You obviously also need a lot of knowhow about electronics and loads more materials to actually build a car.
There are however also people who take old gasoline cars and convert them to electric cars.
Man, people are living in places where they get free batteries and am here living in hell, half of me buried in the desert sand and the other dead and hopeless in a place where they would sell tetanus ridden rust if they could.
I was looking at a diy electric motorcycle and worked it out roughly to six grand canadian not including the frame, it was planned up be able to get up to a hundred kilometers an hour with a range of eighty kilometers I think but that would still leave room to upgrade them later
Where were you sourcing batteries in Canada? I have a cute little electric car from the 70s that I bought for very little, and installed a heavy, expensive, low capacity lead acid pack like it was originally designed for. Unfortunately this means the range is about 15 miles. I use it as a farm runabout but it can't make it to town and back.
It would be a great car if I could source some used Tesla modules or similar but they are very hard to find here at the prices you see in the USA! Nominal pack voltage is 72v, i.e. 6s 12v lead acid.
Economies of scale are huge for vehicles. A single prototype vehicle like a model y or mach e often costs several million dollars. A custom car might not be that much, but it'd still be a ton.
Not a solar one like the thing pictured, LOL. There simply isn't enough W/m2 for solar panels to power anything less light and spartan than a World Solar Challenge car.
Aside from that, the cheapest way to build a custom [battery, not solar] electric car is probably to salvage parts off a wrecked commercially-built electric car.
I'm a fan of Aging Wheels and SuperfastMatt on Youtube, both of whom are building custom EVs from used Tesla parts.