Design exploration of an electric car

Where does most of the resistance to motion of an electric car come from? Hill climbing? Rolling resistance? Wind? What performance can we expect with the power that we have? By the time you finish this task you will have answered questions like these.

You have the knowledge you need to work this out. Just in case you can’t quite see how to do it, this video is your guide.

You will need to download the design specification in the Downloads section below to complete this task. The specification lists the vehicle characteristics you will need for the analysis. All in all there is plenty of scope in this design task to explore any other vehicles you care to research, from bicycles to B-Double road trains.

If you just watch the video it will take about 9 minutes. If you take the opportunity to do calculations it will take longer. You might get completely hooked on this fascinating exploration and take hours – continuing long after this course ends!

For a worked solution see the solution to Retro Tutorial RT6.3.

Talking points

• What did you learn about the resistance to motion of a car? For example, did the rolling resistance come out at more than you expected? Did the air resistance at high speeds seem surprisingly large (or small)?
• Perhaps you explored drag coefficients with a web-search. If so, what did you find?
• What vehicles did you apply these methods to?