Even building a very small car is a pretty big undertaking for an individual, especially since I have no experience in several of the subject areas where expertise is required- hub motor and LiFePo4 battery systems, composite design and fabrication, etc. There is plenty to learn, a fair amount of work that will probably need contracting out, and hundreds of details to handle. Inevitably, there will be some trial and error getting things right, which can get really expensive and time-consuming. The trick is to do as little of that as necessary, but more than that, good planning and effective project management are critical to the Moonray hitting its targets.
First, a very clear set of project goals needs to be formalized, which will then largely dictate a set of specifications for the vehicle. These specifications aren't etched in stone; in fact they have already moved around quite a bit and I expect that to continue. Being practical is important, and when I learn the limits or costs of materials and components, being flexible enough to modify the specifications around what is easy, hard or likely impossible is essential. The goal is simple:
"Moonray will go faster and farther than any commercially available electric vehicle in its weight class, and will be practical to operate as a street-driven daily commuter/runabout EV."
Notice that it is "faster and farther" because coupling those two things, and producing a licensed, insured road vehicle, is critical to defining the project goal. There is a class of EV single-seaters, somewhat lighter than Moonray, that compete for distance. They are called Electrathon racers, and they go very far, like 50 miles, on a single car battery, but they are slower than the 'ray, and not practical or even licensed for street use. There are also a few even faster EVs, which are designed specifically for bagging speed records, but they aren't licensed, either, and I don't want a race-only vehicle. The Moonray aims to be the fastest street-licensed trike in its weight class, leaving the ultimate speed and distance marks to no-compromises off-road-use-only vehicles that you really wouldn't want to commute or run errands in, anyway. Moonray isn't a contest vehicle; its for daily use.
A secondary goal for the project is to showcase recent EV technology, and to show particularly how much can be done by the hobbyist with essentially off-the-shelf components. The batteries I'll be using have only really been available for about a year, and they are improving rapidly. The motor has been available for a couple of months. Without those leading edge components, Moonray simply wouldn't be able to achieve its goals, but they are neither terribly expensive nor hard to come by. What I'm doing isn't rocket science, either. Anyone with the time and skills to do meticulous work, or the modest money required to buy other peoples' time and skills, could easily build something very similar. I'm not making plans or kits, though, because its my hobby and not a business. I'm not an engineer and I'm not willing to have my work certified by one so that other people can confidently rely on it. The Moonray will be a demonstration of what is now possible, not necessarily a program for how to do it.
My other goals for the Moonray are logistical: I want it in service by the spring of 2011, with a total cost at or under my budget projections. I have a budget in mind, but it still has to be validated. I don't have unlimited time or money to spend on it, and frankly I'm not aware of any project with neither time nor economic constraint that turned out satisfactorily. Limits on resources seems to be a necessary ingredient to the development of anything good. 16 months from now feels like a reasonable amount of time, but let's see where we are in a few months. I'll talk about my budget once I understand it better, and have cleared it with my family.
So that's it: farther and faster than any commercially available lightweight street-legal EV, on the road by Spring 2011, and within the yet-to-be-determined budget. Piece of Cake. Let's get started...
