# Idiots making the EV community a joke



## jlsawell (Apr 4, 2008)

How to preserve the public's addiction to guzzoline:
1. Make an ugly all-electric car that can't carry passengers or luggage
2. Make it too wide to fit through the workshop doors.

Cretins.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/t...ust-escape-from-the-garage-20090922-g0ml.html

The car with potential to save the world - but first it must escape from the garage
RICHARD MACEY
September 23, 2009










Red faces... first-year engineering students with the all-electric ManGo. The car is 155 centimetres wide, five centimetres wider than the workshop doorway. Photo: James Brickwood
WITH few clunky mechanical parts, the revolutionary all-electric ManGo may well be the car of the future.

But its creators will first have to get it out of the garage.

For five months, 35 of the University of Sydney's brightest first-year engineering students have been labouring in a workshop, solving a maze of complex technical problems.

Scheduled to be unveiled this evening at the university's York Theatre, their car has no mechanical brakes, no gear box, no axles and no differential.

Instead, each wheel will be powered by its own electric motor controlled by a central computer. By getting rid of heavy mechanical parts, one student, Jonathan Yeow, said yesterday ''you can have a lighter car, you can drive it faster, with less power''. The Mango is so light, Mr Yeow observed, ''two people can pick it up''.

But yesterday, as the students worked on the car, they discovered a last-minute snag.

Their ManGo ''concept car'' is 155 centimetres wide, about five centimetres wider than the workshop's doorway. ''Size had never been a major concern,'' mumbled one student.

''It's slightly embarrassing,'' admitted Michael Roberts, their engineering professor, who promised he would ''take the bloody doors down'' to get the ManGo to its launch on time.

Associate Professor Roberts said the glitch merely added ''a touch of humanity'' to what his ''really talented students'' had achieved. When assigned to create a lightweight all-electric car 20 weeks ago ''they were really thrown in the deep end''.

Associate Professor Roberts observed that many students now came to university with excellent computer skills, but had often missed the hands-on experiences of previous generations. ''We used to make billycarts,'' he recalled.

While his students had overlooked the size of the workshop doors, they had ''what Leonardo had when he was designing flying machines, and what Brunel had when he was putting ships out to sea … balls''.

''They have shown guts and determination and courage. Only on top of that comes the science.'' The ManGo, which has a 48-volt lithium battery to power the motors, has a 240-volt adaptor. To recharge the battery, said Mr Yeow, ''you just plug it in''. The car also boasts a ''regenerative braking system'' that allows it to top up its battery as it drives. ''In normal frictional breaking'' employed by conventional cars, said Mr Yeow, ''energy is wasted as heat''.

But when braking in the ManGo, ''you can capture that energy and dump it back, as electricity, in the battery''.

The computer system not only steers the wheels, ''it essentially tells the car how fast it is going and how well the tyres are gripping. I think it has a lot of promise,'' said Mr Yeow.

While the ManGo will be unveiled today, the students say they need another $10,000 to have it ready for a full demonstration of its driving efficiency.


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## neanderthal (Jul 24, 2008)

Ha ha. Another small ugly car that no-one will want to be seen driving. Great... The fact that they can't get it out the door had me falling over laughing. And I don't like the idea of no friction brakes for back up. If there is an electrical prob, no brakes.

I guess I'm being kind of hard on them, they are first year engineering students. Oh well. Still funny


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## paker (Jun 20, 2008)

Looks like they could put it on it's side to get it out, maybe.


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

jlsawell, I think you summed it up best in a previous post:

*"lord, make my enemies ridiculous"* or something along those lines.

A truly advanced car not only has to be battery powered (IMO at least) but also should be reasonably low and wide to increase handling performance and decrease drag at higher cruising speeds.

Electric city cars in all their forms are little more than a public acknowledgment that they don't think EVs can hit the highway, so why worry about aerodynamics or any performance above 50 MPH.

And its like this all over the world. All of these so called "save the world" cars are just so painful to even look at.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Ten minutes with a hand grinder will get it out the door, and lower the frontal area


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## jlsawell (Apr 4, 2008)

The truly tragic element is the last bit.

They need ANOTHER $10k to get it "finished"

They have no effing clue about getting a Holden Astra or Mazda 121 for $5,000, spending $8,000 converting it and PRESTO - a nice looking, small-ish car that doesn't look absurd.

<sigh> imagine what my conversion could be with $10k to spend...


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