Gridcars EVE, an electric trike.
 

Hi everyone,

This is a project I have the pleasure of working on. It's a small company situated in South Africa that is focused on electric vehicles, mostly of the variety that would slot in underneath your average city car. Keeping things in the three-wheel realm also excludes their vehicles from a number of rules / laws that four wheeled vehicles would require, as I am sure is similar in many parts of the world.

Most recently I have helped them on their 'halo' vehicle and defining a look for this tandem-seat three-wheeler.

So far it'll have in-wheel motors up front, and batteries in the floor and the third chassis iteration is currently being built up and will hopefully start undergoing test-runs sooner rather than later.

For a faired version however, an investment would be needed from external sources.

But, I thought I would share it here. I hope all that I have gleaned from the Aerodynamics thread will meet approval here :)

For those on Facebook, go here as it's the most complete page of theirs:
https://www.facebook.com/GridCars?

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ess%20109b.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ess%20110b.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ress%2091b.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ress%2092b.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ress%2094b.jpg

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...ress%2093b.jpg

Those renders certainly look cool

Interesting. Got any specifications on it?

It reminds me a lot of the tango.

Commuter Cars: Tango | Home

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1432999628

Especially the blacked out windshield. :)

The hub-motors approach seems to be the most sensible option, but have you never considered a single rear-wheel motor instead? Increasing the non-suspended weight at the steerable wheels ends up increasing the effort needed for steering.

Thanks for the link of the Tango - I'll certainly go have a look at it. Doax, my electrical knowledge goes as far as: "If I plug this into that socket, this light should go on", but if I remember correctly, they've got two 10kw motors and I am not sure about the battery specs at all. I think they were talking about a range between 80 and 120km.

The 2nd chassis they've built does have the motor at the back and it makes for wonderfully light steering. They couldn't test the hubmotors on this chassis' suspension, so they're busy rigging up some suspension on the 3rd chassis to allow for this. It's the third chassis' basic shape that was designed in tandem with the work that I did for them. This first suspension will be rubber-based, so I am interested to see what the result of that'll be :eek:...

I think the engineer wants to see what it's like with all the weight up front (better for the tadpole config.) and the whole understeer vs. oversteer thing as well as regen. Those Chinese motors really are heavy though, so I really would like to drive the two side by side to see.

I'll elaborate as things become more clear / tied down.

Think about the original Austin Mini, which had a rubber-based suspension, and you might expect similar results.

Excellent and safer vehicle rendering than mine was. I had a rear hub motor with much skinnier tires. Scary getting too light in front! It just wore itself out bending countless spokes in the back wheel!

I had a 3-wheel Westcoaster many years ago. It had 2 frames- attached; but "floating" or moving about 5 inches. That would have put weight where needed on my trike.

The position of battery packs might be arranged to improve the weight bias.

The current prototype uses a single rear wheel motor. This would well, but tests have indicated that dual front wheel HUB motors will give better handling. So the final prototype that will go for Homologation will have Front HUB motors.