Hyperefficient Student-Built EV Defies Odds

[n2doc]

By Keith Barry
August 24, 2010 |
10:00 am |
Categories: Cool Cars, Design, EVs and Hybrids


The coolest thing about this electric car isn’t the Lola racing car chassis, or the clear plastic bodywork or even the fact it gets the equivalent of 300 mpg. The coolest thing about this car is the kids who built it.

The car was a class project at the Automotive Design Studio at the DeLaSalle Education Center, an alternative high school in Kansas City, Missouri. The school serves those kids who fall through the cracks, and most of them live below the poverty line. A lot of them have seen some violence in their lives, others have kids, others have drug and alcohol problems and many of them struggle and many struggle with basic educational skills. It’s an amazing opportunity for them to follow up two years of work in a class called Creative Studio and Entrepreneurial Studies by designing and building a record-breaking electric car.

Our colleagues at Wired UK recently wrote a short story about the car that we featured here at Autopia. We finally caught up with project supervisor Steve Rees after the team’s successful run at Bridgestone Americas’ test track in Texas. Before he was a teacher, Rees was an architect who also raced cars, including an appearance at 24 Hours of Daytona.

Of course, our first question was about the car’s amazing clear plastic shell.



Read More http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/08/student-built-ev-defies-the-odds-may-break-a-record/

When I saw the pic, I immediately thought- What a great idea! Not practical for real world cars, but great for this kind of competition

[ejpoeta]

1. it shows it's possible for an electric vehicle to get decent gas mileage.