Open-Source Personal Electric Vehicle

So, even when I started this project, I knew it was extremely ambitious. It wasn't very long before I realized that this project was out of my league. I simply don't have the time and resources to put into a project like this. I still want to make this project some day, but it's going to be a while (probably years) before that happens. Until then, this project has been officially shelved.

While thinking about how my project could fit into the robotics module competition, there weren't a whole lot of options available besides the auto-leveling and tilting mechanism. This also has the benefit of being one of the lower-cost portions of the build and potentially requiring fewer tools as long as I can find a way to use off-the-shelf parts.

First, I had to figure out what to use. I considered PVC, but I already knew going in that even schedule 40 pipes are not the best idea to use with compressed air. Since this system is going to be relatively exposed to the elements, the PVC will degrade with time, and I don't really feel like pulling shrapnel out of my butt when it explodes. After a little research I decided to give black pipe a go. I know it may rust with time, but it is readily available at hardware stores and, being made of steel, will be strong enough for the application at hand. Maybe someday when funds are better I will upgrade to an aluminum pipe solution.

A trip to Menards gave me a wide playground of pipes and fittings to play with. Turns out that black pipe is schedule 40. Happy day! This meant that I could use a few PVC fittings. This would decrease the overall cost, and provide potential bearing surfaces for the actuator to slide on, provided the parts aren't going to explode in a way that will kill me if they break. The plastic-on-metal is going to slide so much better than metal-on-metal.

After an hour of trying different pipes and fittings to get parts that closely mate, I settled on 1-1/2" pipe for the outer portion, and 3/4" pipe for the piston rod, with pvc fittings to create the head of the piston.

Parts for the actuator.

I started by dry-fitting everything together. At this point, I'm not concerned about minor leaks between the fittings. I need to make sure the piston doesn't leak too much between the PVC cap and the walls of the cylinder.

The top assembly is the piston, and the lower assembly is the body of the actuator.

A perfect fit!

The cap needed a small modification so that I can connect my air compressor, so I drilled and then tapped a 1/4"NPT hole to attach a quick-connect fitting for now. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to drill through the black pipe!

1/4" NPT hole was needed in the pipe cap so I could attach my air compressor.

A few months ago, while combing the depth of the internet for information on electric bikes, I stumbled across a peculiar vehicle called the velomobile.

I instantly fell in love with the idea of a small, enclosed vehicle that I could use to commute daily to university or to work, even in the harsh Michigan winters. (It's not very fun on my regular bicycle in all that snow and cold...) I began doing research on these vehicles, and realized that buying one was well over my price range, especially one with all of the features that I wanted. I figured I could probably build one (Eventually... You know what they say: "Give a thousand monkeys a thousand typewriters...") so I started looking into what features I would want my velomobile to have.

After some more digging, I came across another interesting vehicle, the Toyota i-Road.

I thought it was fantastic. If you haven't come across this vehicle before, you really need to see it drive! Once again, I poked around for where I could get this, and once again was disappointed to find out that it is only a concept car, test-driven only by a lucky few members of the media.

At this point, I knew that I definitely wanted my vehicle to lean into turns the same way as the i-Road, and that the basic frame would be similar to a bog-standard velomobile. I was able to track down a few leaning designs for three-wheeled motorcycles and ATVs, and even for a trike, but none of them had any real information of how to make such a mechanism. Apparently, there used to be some plans for a vehicle similar to what I wanted, but they seem to be lost to history. Time to design my own!