Video Ben Harris Shows off the Electric Vehicle Challenge Simulator (Video) 37
This is all part of the Harris Educational effort to make science teaching fun and interesting, not just with electric cars and simulations of their circuitry, but with other kits and even training services. As Ben's Training Services page says, "Harris Educational can provide face-to-face or online training for individuals, small groups, or companies. We can also help you design and implement your own training programs." So besides the video interview here, please look at Ben's pages, this article about his work, and check some of the videos on his assorted pages. It's good stuff, especially if you have (or plan to have) kids in high school. (Alternate Video Link)
Ben: I am here with the EV Challenge Troubleshooting Simulator. This is a high school program for kids where we take donated gasoline cars and they convert them into electric vehicles. And then they go to a test track, it is NASCAR certified and race them. But they also have to do presentations, like YouTube videos, written tests, and they also have to learn electronics and electrical troubleshooting as it relates to an electric vehicle. This is a Tesla Roadster in a box. This is the circuit of a typical electrical vehicle. You have a 12-volt auxiliary battery same as your car battery in your car, runs your radio, runs your lights, it also controls the contactor which in a real car is a high current relay that engages a higher voltage traction battery that runs the motor. So this is your accelerator on the floor, when I turn the key and step on the accelerator we would start to move and then we would speed up and then we can change our speed and drive off.
Tim: It is a little hard to see but that is fitting this red disc over here?
Ben: That’s fitting the disc. So that represents the wheels of your car. So right now it is working and everything is fine. Well, that’s great but what we do is we can have faulty wiring, we can have faulty components, so we can put a bad relay, bad fuses, we can simulate other problems or
Tim: And the kids doing it can’t tell what’s been done.
Ben: Right. They don’t know what’s been done visually, they can’t tell. And they are not allowed to inspect components to look at a fuse to see that it is blown. So we also have five hidden switches on the board, so we can break this circuit in one of five points that now all work. So they are basically given a multimeter and in the challenge they are given five minutes to find two errors document them and fix them.
Tim: Now how many of these have you built so far?
Ben: We have got 12 in the program, and the schools in the EV Challenge program with some more on the way because they are adding more schools this year. We are also hoping to expand out and get them into other schools because I think this would be a great way to teach electricity and electronics with a real world perspective—how a car works.
Tim: Now talk about the price of this versus what does it cost that otherwise show the same kind of skills?
Ben: So originally they had a troubleshooting board, it was a great system, it was made of golf cart parts, so real electric vehicle components, but it was about $4000 worth of components, mounted on a piece of plywood with a high voltage lead acid battery. And that’s too expensive to get into individual schools, several thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff on that board, and so they only had the one they used in the actual challenges, because the schools couldn’t practice or be taught. So this one actually has the schematic symbols etched on the board beside their components. You can see visually how the circuit is wired, and it is a teaching aid and a training aid as well as a way to evaluate. We can sell this for under $300, whereas the original was several thousands.
Tim: Now for right now, though, that’s only really on offer for schools, is that correct?
Ben: Right, we have it in this program but we are going to get it on my website for sale sometime late next year.
Tim: Okay. And that will still be in the range of what?
Ben: Same price. $295.
Tim: Alright. Now this box you have got it in is a nice kind of a hard shell and that seems a little better than plywood mounted board. Does it look like something that you would expect to have final that you would sell, is it pretty much in a finished state?
Ben: Other than the color this is one from the competition. We make it red to give you a little more challenge, but other than a black panel, it is exactly the same as the ones we produced yeah.
Tim: And you say we, tell us about your production, where is your factory?
Ben: So I actually make these out of my home, we get some volunteer students that come help assembly sometimes. So I make the parts on a ShopBot Desktop CNC router. So this is actually made out of acrylic so there are two layers, the colored layer and a clear layer, so all of the circuits are engraved in the top and then internally all of the components, like this is a pigtail holder for the relay, it is not a panel mounted it will be more expensive, so we made bracketry to hold it in place. It is cut out on the board over here as it is mounted on the spoiler board to cut it.
Tim: Alright. It must be an interesting place, your house on a production day.
Ben: My wife is a saint...
Converts gas cars to electric? (Score:2)
Does it work on any type of cars? Would it work on my rust bucket on wheels ?
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From looking at the pictures on the site, one of the cars appears to be an early 1990 vintage Ford Mustang, and another older small pickup is shown. Therefore, I'd say if your "rust bucket on wheels" isn't too large, it may work.
There's another company near me that is working on making electric and hybrid delivery trucks. They also convert Mercedes ML series SUV's to electric, and have a program to retrofit diesel trucks and vans.
http://ampelectricvehicles.com/ [ampelectricvehicles.com]
http://ampelectricvehicles.com/repower-program [ampelectricvehicles.com]
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Electric vehicle range is very dependent on weight and drag. So you can certainly convert heavy, boxy cars. And a larger vehicle will give you more room for batteries. But the performance will not be good.
A common conversion is using a small pickup truck, which is cheap and light, and then filling the bed with batteries. Obviously you need a cap over the back.
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Filling the bed of a light truck with batteries will actually improve traction. It's common practice to put a bunch of bags of sand or gravel in the bed when winter hits. I use gravel and each spring supplement the driveway with a few more sacks of rock.
Deathtrap (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen amateur battery conversions on a couple vehicles. The results look like deathtraps to me. Filling some compartment with inappropriate batteries (the type always determined exclusively by cost) that behave in unanalyzed ways in a collision is a recipe for horrible failure.
Sorry. That's what I see. This is cool for education and demonstration purposes, but amateur conversions are not roadworthy and no one should be misled about that.
But they will be. Because if it's "green" and "for the environ
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I've seen amateur battery conversions on a couple vehicles. The results look like deathtraps to me.
The conversions are as good as the people doing it. Yes, some folks will trust their lives to duct tape and fishing line, and others will do a better job then the pros... It is not about DIY, but about who the Y is.
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The conversions are as good as the people doing it. Yes, some folks will trust their lives to duct tape and fishing line, and others will do a better job then the pros... It is not about DIY, but about who the Y is.
The problem being that that "Y" shares the road with you.
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That has been true of DIY car maintenance and maintenance in general since the invention of cars.
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That's true of car maintenance in general, ever since price-competition became part of the equation (essentially since forever)
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The problem being that that "Y" shares the road with you.
And I would say their cell phone is much more of a risk to me than whatever crappy maintenance they have done or not done.
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The conversions are as good as the people doing it. Yes, some folks will trust their lives to duct tape and fishing line, and others will do a better job then the pros... It is not about DIY, but about who the Y is.
Yes, anyone is welcome to risk their own lives, but when they are manuevering a ton of steel and batteries held together by duct tape and prayers at high speeds on public roads the danger is increased for everyone else too.
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No, the danger is increased for #random_someone# not #everyone#. Which sucks if you're the random someone. But let's not turn it into a fullscale social disaster.
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Yes, anyone is welcome to risk their own lives, but when they are manuevering a ton of steel and batteries held together by duct tape and prayers at high speeds on public roads the danger is increased for everyone else too.
But only a small amount of increase. Cell Phones, tablets, complex stereos, and in car "systems" cause many more wrecks then a handful of electric cars.
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I've had the idea of converting my truck to some sort of hybrid. I'd put the batteries in under the bed(there's room there). But yes, I've seen plenty of people who don't pay any mind to what would happen in an accident. Nearly a ton of lead-acid batteries in the passenger compartment? Stupid. Even if they avoid there, most cars aren't designed around having nearly a ton of batteries adding mass to the vehicle in an accident. IE it wouldn't be stiff enough to account for the extra momentum and energy
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I am converting a truck now, and am having difficultly in putting the battery pack @ 400 lbs underneath the truck bed and securing it easily.
What have you come up with? It seems like a yoke which lays across the frame rails and which Us down to encompass the battery boxes would do the job, and be easy enough to weld up.
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Because if it's "green" and "for the environment" you can crucify puppies and nobody will blink.
I've been to a few dozen electric vehicle club meetings in two cities. Maybe one or two people are big environmentalists. Three or four people are hardcore "off grid" guys that don't want to be dependent on refined gasoline. The vast majority are nerds who like building cool stuff.
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I've seen amateur battery conversions on a couple vehicles. The results look like deathtraps to me...This is cool for education and demonstration purposes, but amateur conversions are not roadworthy and no one should be misled about that.
The added weight causing extra wear and tear on brakes and suspension, which will increase maintenance costs but are also critical for avoiding accidents. It's safety issue for everyone else sharing a public road with a DIY EV. We are so accustomed to manuevering our individual ton of steel on wheels at high speeds that we tend to forget about the inherent danger.
That said, I'm not against EVs at all, and I'm honestly looking at an EV for my next car, but I completely agree that these retro-fitted DIY EVs s
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The added weight causing extra wear and tear on brakes and suspension,
So replace the bushings with polyurethane, install fancy brake pads and/or upgrade to bigger brakes, put in the HD shocks... it's not rocket surgery. A lot of cars also have a lot of crap you can rip out.
It's not a someday thing... (Score:2)
...it's a fuck-no thing. I've seen the "conversions" people are doing. You're likely to wind up dead driving one of those things.
EVs aren't going mainstream until auto manufacturers make them both affordable and able to travel the same range as a gas vehicle in the same sentence. It's nice that there are $60k+ vehicles out there that can go the distance, but it winds up just being a novelty for people with a lot of money.
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What sort of percentage would you consider "mainstream"? Tesla is looking to build a $30k car, and there's actually more leafs on the road.
I'll make an assertion: it's not the range so much as it's the cost. People will seriously consider it so long as it's range is enough to cover over 95% of their driving needs.
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No, it's definitely both. Cost is of course the larger of the two, but range anxiety is a real thing. Not to mention, the infrastructure to gas up and go in just about any direction exists, but the ability to charge up in any given direction is fairly limited.
Now, you say it's enough range to cover 95% of a person's driving needs - but it's that 5% that becomes massively inconvenient. So what are people supposed to do? Buy an electric car and a gas car? That's just as expensive as buying the $60k tesla
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Not to mention, the infrastructure to gas up and go in just about any direction exists, but the ability to charge up in any given direction is fairly limited.
Not if you're a creative Model-S owner. Every RV park in the country has an outlet that can provide a full speed home charge. Not supercharger rate, but still around 8 times as fast as a cripple charge.
So what are people supposed to do? Buy an electric car and a gas car?
At least initially. You have to remember that 'most' families own at least 2 cars. Especially those buying new ones. If you're going to have two vehicles in the family, so to speak, you can really optimize - even if you need a truck every weekend, you can still use a compact for whichever parent works th
Bane of education (Score:2)
The huge progressive education push of the early 20th century has been the bane of education. The roots of making education "fun" come from John Dewey's attempt to make education "child-centric" by converting it to "experience". This has destroyed education as an institution and as a functional concept.
Education used to be about learning, about remembering, about memorizing. It was based on a broken theory: the mind is a muscle, and exercising it makes it strong. Upon learning this was, in fact, com
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I support your sig, by the way.
But I think education should strive to let each student learn in the way they think is best, for them. Education should be all things to all people.
MOOCs are a start, but they still retain holdovers from an obsolete, archaic educational method that focuses too much attention on cheating and censors students from voluntarily helping each other and sharing information.
As an example, I recently completed a Solar Energy MOOC [edx.org]. It was great because it introduced a lot of theory whic
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But I think education should strive to let each student learn in the way they think is best, for them. Education should be all things to all people.
This is the most vacant thing I've ever heard repeated by just about everyone.
The only opinion of students that actually matters in education is if the material is interesting. If it's interesting to the student, it's easier to learn: it's more meaningful, and attention is more focused. The kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learning thing is largely bunk, aside from people with crossed wires--synesthetes--whom memory techniques seek to emulate. Invariably, when some students learn something better wi
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I know that I'm individual. I've learned foreign languages. I use my methods, which included grammar, pronunciation, and literature. But I don't generalize from myself to assume that anyone else should learn my way. Why do teachers? For control.
I think Alfie Kohn says it best in The Case Against Grades [alfiekohn.org]:
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I know that I'm individual. I've learned foreign languages. I use my methods, which included grammar, pronunciation, and literature. But I don't generalize from myself to assume that anyone else should learn my way. Why do teachers? For control.
You are making a fundamental assumption that your mind is somehow different from all other minds in some fundamental way, and that the methods that work best for you won't work for other people.
That assumption is incorrect.
Within your mind, you have knowledge, from memories. Experiences are remembered, recalled, and applied to new experiences. You have behaviors that are built this way: when you study, your think about the information in the way you've learned.
If we present you with information in