A new Solar Vehicle (with pedals)

Thank you 1JohnFoster and amber wolf for your comments, and sorry for not reply earlier.
It is long time I do not have enough time to update this post, we have been quite busy with the project.
Now we have an alpha prototype that works quite well, and we are improving all systems on it.
Pictures attached on the middle of the construction process and finished.

More pictures on flick: https://www.flickr.com/photos/evovelo/23798753632/
 

Attachments

  • DSC09059-2.JPG
    DSC09059-2.JPG
    209.2 KB · Views: 1,259
  • DSC06853-2.jpg
    DSC06853-2.jpg
    261.5 KB · Views: 1,259
We are closing tomorrow the applications period for the Beta Testing Program for our solar vehicle. If someone is interested you can find more info and send your application here:
http://www.evovelo.club/

(Email msg just now from Facebook user Gonzalo Chomon

12795549_1223568981004331_2590059916908021277_n.jpg
 
Email received just now:
Beta Testers selection has now been completed

Thanks to all applicants of our program. There has been a fabulous response from the public and we had more than 500 people interested on our program. After a very thorough selection process we can finally say that we have already completed the group of Beta Testers. With their invaluable aid we will develop the finale version of the vehicle.
 
Email just today from "news@evovelo.com":
What has 2016 been like for evovelo
Dear Beta Testers,
It has been a year of goods and bads

I want to explain what has been happening during the last months, what is our actual state and what is our future planning, our challenges and targets.

As you know we are 6 persons involved in this project and until now it has been funded with our own money and time and some help from family and friends.

This means that all team members have to work on something else in order to make money for living, as we all have families. Only myself can give full time to the project.

As you know at the beginning of this year we finished our first prototype, it is what is usually called an alfa prototype or testing mule, it was made on a big rush from all the team and some others, even one beta tester was involved on it.

And as you know, it actually works really well, but still needs lot of improvement.

It was for me a period for over 3 months with over 14 hours daily work and followed by lot of traveling. Even on one TV shooting the mö prototype had an accident while the driver was driving it full speed off-road and drove into a trench... all that pressure on me made me fall sick for several months. Lets say that my body just gave up.

This made a big halt on the project. This halt does not mean that the project is dead or we have any intention to abandon it. It just will take us a bit longer but we will get there it is our team compromise.

But not everything has been bad news this year, we were able to make a prototype, run and test it, even had time to have a small crash test with it.

We made over 400 interviews to candidates for Beta Testers and we chose you. And discussion about improvements started with them. Relation with the manufacturer has been created and plans for starting manufacturing next year.

We were invited to show our project at the first European Light Electric Vehicle Summit at Barcelona, where our engineers met the guys from Local Motors. We share passion for vehicle innovation and open source.

And we opened reservations for the mö.

So we are very happy and proud of this year and expecting a great 2017.

At the moment we have one big challenge ahead: We need some money in order to hire talent to keep on improving the mö, to start production, and to do some marketing, we already have found some of that money on this last period.

The manufacturer Mexacover is willing to invest on next prototype, testing, manufacturing engineering and some on production start. And some other investors have contacted us interested on our project. That is great, so we are only missing some money for the design engineering and that is what I am focusing in right now.

As well during this last months as suggested by all of you, suspensions, body modifications and other improvements have been predesigned. Thank you for your help.

Next milestones will be to start producing a second prototype with all this improvements and testing them latter on, this will happen on the following months. Same time we have to find money and some other market targets in order to improve sales in the future.

Gonzalo P. Chomon

We wish you a nice and prosperous new year.

Let me remind you that you can interact with us through the Beta Testers discussion group at Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1491592701135052/ (if you have no access please request)

If you are interested on becoming a evovelo’s distributor or supplier please contact us, as we already have a Letter of Intentions ready to be signed.

http://www.evovelo.com/en/contact.php
 
Hmm, well that explains what happened to the Mo.

I was looking forward to the Open Source release of the plans so I could try and build one here. Looks like I may have to fall back on building a Mochet clone instead if this is going to be stalled for very long.
 
Hehe... Well, somebuddy's excited. Just got an email:

We are delighted to inform that evovelo and Grupo JPG officially announce their partnership. The agreement signals the beginning of manufacturing and production for mö, a very long and eagerly anticipated moment for all of us!

evovelo is delighted and honored to announce this partnership, with such an admirable organization. Grupo JPG is a company with more than 60 years of experience, in the automotive sector, with offices in Madrid, Linares and Areitio. The company’s business areas are engineering, maintenance and supply of spare parts and since 2011 it has been responsible for the after-sales service of all vehicles produced by Suzuki-Santana Motor.

Grupo JPG will provide the project with experience in production models, process engineering solutions, and all automotive knowledge, from design and development to the after-sales service.

Engineering production has already been launched and we expect to start shipping the first Beta models during Autumn 2018.

You may have heard about the new General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR"), that came into effect May 25, 2018. If you are receiving this newsletter is because you were interested in knowing about our products and wanted to keep up to date and therefore you applied to receive this.

evovelo will never rent or sell your personal information to others. We may store some personally identifiable information co-located with our hosting provider and MailChimp. Please visit the MailChimp website to review their Privacy Policy. (https://mailchimp.com/legal/privacy/)

We hope that our content is useful to you. However, if you wish to cancel or make any changes on your subscription please do not hesitate to use the link that appears at the footer of this email.

We also invite you to visit our renovated website
https://www.evovelo.com/

All the best,
Team evovelo

mail


mail


:mrgreen:
 
[burp] ... Few mentions in this tread re heating/cooling the passenger compartment? Re cooling... I've owned a few automobiles in my time, where the first one, a Volkswagen "Beetle" has flaps at foot level that could be opened to generate cooling breezes from outside air as the vehicle moved. So. Just a thought. :wink:
 
I've also had a few VW Beetles. They were a pain in the butt to heat in the winter. :D

As for heating/cooling there are a number of options including "swamp" /evaporative coolers for those who live in more arid climates to one of the new portable air conditioners.

like the Zero Breeze (yes, it has shipped)
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVNgkXeNup4[/youtube]
 
^^Hehe... "re heating/cooling the passenger compartment"... Just curious. I "hitch/hiked" once in the winter, getting seven rides w/four of them having zero heating. So re any vehicle, just curious. :mrgreen:
 
Back
Top