An electric Porsche 914 from MIT
Three decades before Porsche and Volkswagen collaborated on the Cayenne/Touareg, they got together to create a little mid-engined sports car called the 914. Now a group of engineering students has taken a 914 provided one of their professors and created their answer to the Tesla Roadster. Mechanical engineering Professor Yang Shao-Horn and her husband, Quinn Horn bought a 914 on eBay and made it available for the students to do the conversion.
Valence Technology provided eighteen lithium phosphate batteries along with a management system. The team of students led by Emmanuel Sin gutted the powertrain of the Porsche, assembled a battery pack with the battery management system and installed it in the car along with an electric motor. Now that the car is assembled they will be starting performance testing. The electric drivetrain should generate about 50-60 hp which should move the little car up to a top speed of 70-100 mph. The students estimate that the lithium phosphate battery pack should yield about 100 miles of range with a four to five hour charge time.
[Source: MIT, thanks to Bobby and Linton for the tip]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Domenick 8:42PM (6/09/2007)
Is this the best MIT can do? Better electric Porsches seem to be available here. http://www.evporsche.com (Scroll down) They might not have Tesla=like performance but they are cheaper and seem better than MIT's effort.
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A5-14 9:34AM (6/10/2007)
These are kids doing a project. Cut them some slack.
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susan.kraemer 8:15PM (6/10/2007)
While I think EV conversions and maintenance should be taught in every community college in the nation, because there is going to be a huge demand for mechanics to fix the EVs coming off the assembly lines in the next few years, but MIT? This is no longer cutting edge engineering...
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