In the future, we'll all be driving electric ... shopping carts?
LOLrioKart - Click above to watch the video after the break
Why waste a perfectly good used shopping cart when it can be recycled into something fun? Seeking to definitively answer that question is a twenty-year-old MIT student named Charles Guan who normally spends his free time building competition-spec battle robots. Our favorite of Guan's projects would have to be the LOLrioKart, obviously a play on the classic Mario Kart series of games from Nintendo.
First assembled using an old NiCad battery pack that was quickly nearing the end of its life, the LOLrioKart is well into its second generation using some leftover lithium nanophosphate cells from A123 that the company had donated to the University. This latest 33 Ah battery pack sends its 48 volts to a Briggs and Stratton ETEK DC pancake electric motor, which operates through a DIY rear differential and to the tiny little tires out back. As you might expect, hilarity ensues. Click past the break for a couple of videos.
Gallery: LOLrioKart
[Source: LOLrioKart via Jalopnik]
VIDEO:
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
phez 12:34PM (6/30/2009)
This is crazy awesome but outright insane. All that electrical equipment in an all metal shopping cart? He's just asking for it :)
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Bip-D-Bo 1:51PM (6/30/2009)
I don't care where you go to school, this takes guts and brains. Too bad, though that he lacks the sense to wear a helmet, or even wait until the rain dries. Would you like your death by impact or electrocution?
Carlos 12:55PM (6/30/2009)
I thougt many times about it, and have sense, why we´ve got bags, why shoping carts? because how more you can carry, more are you going to buy. There´s a proyect in South Africa about it, i cant remember the name.
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amtoro 12:59PM (6/30/2009)
Really? this is news? just because he is an MIT student does not make that anything brilliant... why don't we start a series with every one of the modified barbie jeeps, converted electric lawn mowers and wooden carts on evalbum.com? that should keep you busy and at the same time make wonders for the reputation of ABG...............
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Jeremy Korzeniewski 1:14PM (6/30/2009)
amtoro - A little bit of fun never hurt anyone and certainly doesn't damage ABG's reputation. We didn't post this because it was made by a student from MIT, we posted it because the student in question recorded the process on his own site and posted videos of the machine in action.
Rich 10:46PM (6/30/2009)
Cool
but nothing new... Shopping carts, bar stools, couches, toilets all have been electrified for years now. We used to race them while waiting for our turn on the drag strip
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