Electric Car Project

Meeting Time

Wednesday 4:35pm + Thursday 6pm

Project Description

Our stakeholder Ben Lewis has put us up for a challenge. The focus of the team is on the problem that the conversion from a gas vehicle to an electric vehicle is expensive, ineffective, and complicated. He wants to work towards making the conversion from a gas vehicle to an electric vehicle more feasible. Since there is already a good market for parts such as batteries and motors for electric vehicles, the team wanted to make the conversion easier by following our community partner Ben Lewis’s idea to create a black box. The black box can be used with a variety of motors and batteries that exist on the market already to make it easier for people to buy the parts that they want use rather than paying for an expensive conversion kit or having to search for a very specific motor controller that will only work with a certain battery voltage and specific motor. 

The plan was to take old gas vehicles and convert them to electric; however, we changed the focus to a programmable motor controller and power conversion unit that he calls a weatherproof black box. This black box will essentially be the brain and power converter of the vehicle, and his goal is to have it compatible with many of the electric vehicle parts (batteries and motors) that already exist on the market.