- 8/29/2024
INFINITE RANGE ELECTRIC CAR - DIY Build #unlimited #crazy #firstcar #worldnumber1 #dailymotion #foryou #cars
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00:00With all the hype around solar power and electric cars lately, you've likely at some point
00:10had the thought, why don't we just put solar panels on a car and charge them indefinitely?
00:15Well last year I explored this idea and made this car that charges using only the 3 solar
00:19panels on it.
00:21And while this added a bit of range, it was far from infinite.
00:26So in this video I'm exploring this concept a little further and making some modifications
00:30to my solar powered car to finally hunt down that infinite range.
00:56So last September I did an entire video on building this solar powered electric go-kart
01:12thing.
01:17It actually turned out really cool and on a good sunny day it has a range of around
01:22And on just the batteries alone that range is closer to 60 or 70.
01:27And while that's cool, right from the start of this project my whole idea was to explore
01:31the possibility of something producing more energy than it uses and essentially having
01:35an infinite range, theoretically, on a perfect sunny summer day.
01:41It has 3,000 watts of power, 4,000 watt hours of battery capacity, and generates about 450
01:47watts of solar power when driving in the clear sun.
01:51So to dramatically upgrade my range I'm going to have to add quite a few more solar panels
01:54to generate enough energy to sustain what it uses.
01:59So first I just took it out on the road and just did a little test with it just to get
02:02an idea of how many watts it's burning on average.
02:06And from this test it looks like it's burning anywhere from about 200 to 800 watts per motor,
02:12assuming it's not climbing a steep hill.
02:14So I think I could realistically give this a burn rate of say 600 watts per motor or
02:181,200 watts.
02:20If I can get a solar grid to produce more than 1,200 watts I should be able to sustain
02:23this indefinitely while it's sunny.
02:41So rather than modify the structure of the car, I'm going to be building a trailer that
02:44the car will tow that will host a solar grid.
02:47So for the main frame of this trailer I'm using some 1 by 2 inch steel tubing with a
02:52thickness of .065 inch.
02:54And first I'm just measuring out my four main pieces and then cutting them each with a 45
02:59degree angle.
03:01And once I had a piece cut, I'd use a sanding disc in my angle grinder and just clean up
03:20that edge to get them ready for welding.
03:26So basically I'm just making up the main rectangle of the frame right now and it's 14 feet long
03:30and 42 inches wide.
03:32And this should give me enough room for six 175 watt solar panels.
03:37And to weld these pieces together I'm using this cheap flux core welder that I've had
03:41for a decade and fusing this tubing together around all four sides.
03:53And I'm definitely not the world's greatest welder but I can weld somewhat structurally
03:57so I'll just clean this up with an angle grinder, that's what they're for anyway.
04:05And now that is a perfect weld.
04:11So next I added in one cross member with some extra steel I had around and now I'm going
04:15to add on the tongue using this 2 inch by 2 inch steel tubing with that same .065 thickness.
04:21Once I had that welded in place I'm using some more of the 1 by 2 to brace the tongue
04:25onto a couple other points on the frame.
04:55With the main portion of the frame rigged together it's now time to add some wheels.
05:04Now the cheapest and definitely most wasteful way for me to get these wheels is to just
05:07order another bike like I built the original car out of.
05:12That gets me two 20 inch fat tire wheels identical to the ones that are on the car for about
05:16$300 and if I wanted to buy an individual wheel it costs about $300 per wheel so how
05:21does that make any sense?
05:23Anyway I'll just throw out the rest I guess.
05:26So with these wheels I roughly measured out about how wide of a dropout I would need and
05:31then I did some quick maths before I cut up some more steel.
05:53So what I've basically done here is weld together a rectangle with a pocket at each
06:02end to house my wheels and then I'll weld on some of the steel plating that's going
06:07to accept the axles of the bike wheels.
06:14So first to make these plates I'm using some 1 by 2 inch thick plate steel.
06:19This piece is 3 inches wide and I'm just cutting some 3 and a half inch long sections
06:23of this using my chop saw.
06:31Then I'm marking out an axle sized hole for the bike wheel and drilling that through with
06:35a pilot bit and then my 3 eighth inch final hole size.
06:49With all four of my pieces cut and drilled I'm using a cut off wheel and my angle grinder
06:53to cut out the width of this hole so that the bike axle can drop out the bottom.
07:02So now back to assembly.
07:03With my first plate I'd just measure out the center and then weld this square right here.
07:10And then I'd mark out the center on the opposite side and use a clamp to hold this snug.
07:15While I put the wheel in place and measure from the edge of the frame to the edge of
07:18the rim to see if my wheel is running square to the frame.
07:23I'd make some little adjustments with the clamp until I had the same measurement at
07:26the front and back of the wheel which meant my rim is more or less square to my frame
07:31and these plates can be fully welded on.
07:35This really isn't a precision build it's more of a proof of concept and prototype so this
07:40doesn't have to be absolutely 100% perfect but I am trying to do the best I can with
07:45the tools I have available which really isn't many for this type of job.
07:49I must say my welding is getting better though that looks like it might not fall apart.
07:55So with my axle framing completed I can take this over to my main frame and weld this on.
08:13And then take this completed trailer frame outside for some sanding and paint.
08:18I used a bunch of sanding discs in my angle grinder to get rid of this rust on the steel
08:23because it's been sitting in my shop since last year and it's done a bit of oxidizing.
08:28Oxidization?
08:29Rusting.
08:30Then I'm just using some regular trim clad rust paint and painting this aluminum silver.
08:51Now I can bolt on my bike wheels and move this trailer frame inside and start working
09:11on the solar components.
09:27For my solar panels I'm going to be using those same flexible solar panels that I used
09:31in the first video and the reason for that is weight.
09:34These flexible panels only weigh about 7 pounds and a rigid manufactured panel weighs about
09:3960 pounds and I'm not really sure why.
09:44So in order to save a bunch of weight I'm going to keep using these flexible panels
09:47and make up some more wooden frames to be the rigid portion of the panel assembly.
09:53For that I'm just using some of these cedar fence boards and ripping them down to width
09:58and then cutting some 45 degree angles to make a rectangle that's about a half inch
10:02wider and longer than the panel itself.
10:20So now the wood portion of this panel will weigh about 4 pounds along with the 7 pounds
10:23of the panel giving the assembly a weight of 11 pounds versus 60 of the pre-manufactured
10:28aluminum frame panels.
10:31For a vehicle every single pound you can save makes it more energy efficient and this is
10:35literally going to save me hundreds of pounds.
10:39To match the car I took these wood frames outside and gave them a coat of some vibrant
10:43red spray paint.
10:50And now we're ready to start assembling my solar trailer.
11:06So I'm going to be bolting each one of these frames directly onto the trailer.
11:10So to do that I first clamped the frame into its final position and then I drilled through
11:15the frame and the steel with a bolt size drill bit.
11:21Then I took one of these gripping nut things and hammered that into place into the wood
11:25and then I can bolt this in from the bottom side and that way when the solar panel gets
11:29glued down on top of this, this assembly can still be removed from the frame just by simply
11:34undoing that bolt at the bottom.
11:41Now I can start fastening the flexible panels to these wooden frames to create the rigid
11:46panel unit.
11:47So first I just laid out a liberal bead of some caulking I had just laying around the
11:51shop.
11:55And then I stuck the solar panel on top of this and used some stainless steel washer
11:59and screws as a second method to fasten this to the frame.
12:12Now I'm going to install a hitch and for that I'm just using a normal trailer ball hitch.
12:17This coupler slides perfectly over my two inch channel and I can bolt that into place.
12:35And now I have to install a ball on the back of my car.
12:38So I have some of that leftover quarter inch steel plating that I'm going to rig up to
12:42hang a few inches off the end of the car with a ball on it.
13:00Now instead of welding this on where I'd have to remove all the electronics and floor boards,
13:05I'm going to bolt this into place so that I don't really have to remove anything.
13:30Now that I have that dry fit and I know it's going to work out, I can remove that and take
13:33it outside for some paint and then do the final installation.
14:03So now I need to wire these new panels into my car battery.
14:12I have nine panels all of the same spec and three of them are already connected in series
14:17on the car.
14:18So I'm going to do that same series connection in groups of three with the remaining six
14:21panels on the trailer so that I'll have three groups of three panels each that'll then connect
14:27into the charge controller in parallel.
14:30So to do a series connection, I can just take the positive and negative wire of two
14:34panels and connect them together.
14:36But in order to get rid of some excess wire, I'm just going to cut these off and install
14:40some new MC4 connections.
14:42It's the exact same thing, just shorter wires.
14:51So now I have my two series connections between the panels and my remaining positive and negative
14:55lead ready to go out to the charge controller.
14:57Now I can do the same on the remaining three panels at the back.
15:02So a quick explanation of what's going on, each of these panels is 18 volts, 175 watts
15:07and 9 amps.
15:09So when I connect a series group of three panels, it's basically giving me one big panel
15:12with an operating voltage of 54 volts, 525 watts and 9 amps.
15:19Then when I bring these three panel assemblies into the charge controller in parallel, the
15:23charge controller is receiving 54 volts, 1575 watts and 27 amps maximum.
15:39Now I can start running the remaining wires along the frame of the trailer up to the charge
15:43controller.
15:47So to connect my three panel assemblies into the charge controller, I'm just going to use
15:50one of these branch connectors that basically connects three positive or three negative
15:54wires into one wire that goes directly into the charge controller.
15:58To make it easy to attach and detach, all the wires will hook into these with some MC4
16:08connections.
16:17So it's easy as this to hook up my trailer.
16:24One more thing, on all the positive leads, I just put some of these inline 20 amp fuses
16:27just to protect each run of individual panels.
16:31And that's the wiring complete, this should now charge the batteries with a maximum input
16:34of 1575 watts.
16:39So now I want to do just a couple quick touch ups to my car design before I take this out
16:43on the road.
16:45First of all, right now I'm just using the normal cable brakes that came on the bicycles
16:48that are pretty squeaky and don't have much stopping power, so I'm going to upgrade these
16:52to some hydraulic brake lines.
17:11And now my brakes have quite a bit more stopping power and makes me a little more comfortable
17:14in this rickety machine.
17:23I also added on a rear view mirror, and a battery voltage monitor so I can get a rough
17:35idea of how much capacity I have left.
17:40Now it's time to see how far this thing will drive.
19:10So I started this trip at shortly after 10 with 117km on the odometer, thinking that
19:22if I can put on 300km in one day, that's got to be considered infinite range for a
19:27thing that goes 35km an hour and has a 60km unassisted range on these very same roads.
19:40I had a perfect clear blue sky day for filming this and by noon we were producing about 1350
19:45watts of consistent solar power.
19:51I filmed almost all of this just clicking off laps around some side roads near my house,
19:56and by 2 o'clock the battery was still almost completely full.
19:59However, I have only gone just over 80km because of all the stopping and starting involved
20:04with filming.
20:12So I called in a stunt double so that I could still get these shots, but we could keep the
20:16car on the road driving with almost no unnecessary stopping.
20:32By 4 o'clock we were up to 1350 watts of consistent solar power.
21:00By 4 o'clock we were up to 130km with still a nearly full battery at 53.5v, and an hour
21:12later we had added on another 30km.
21:15But thanks to some clouds rolling in and the lower end sun, we're just now starting to
21:18monumentally eat into the battery capacity, showing 52.5v which is more like 75% or so.
21:26Since our solar input dropped from about 1000w an hour ago to about 350w in the clouds
21:31right now, for the first time during the day we're no longer producing an equal or even
21:36a greater amount of energy than we're using.
21:41Luckily by about 6 o'clock the sun did come back out and we were able to generate about
21:45500-600w again, but that's going to be short lived because that sun is setting fast.
21:55By 8 o'clock we were all the way up to 240km, but our solar input was down to just 55w,
22:01and our battery was getting critically low at 48v.
22:13And sure enough about 10km later, just as we were running out of sunlight as if this
22:18was written in a poem, our solar powered vehicle rolled to a stop.
22:25I just want to show you quick what happens when this runs out of energy, it'll go for
22:44a little bit and then run out of power, and then as the solar panels collect more energy
22:48you'll get little bursts of throttle, as the battery regenerates, and obviously that'd
23:02happen a lot quicker if there was more sun.
23:07So the total range of this was 250km, but had I used the perfect time of day better
23:12around 10am to 2pm when I was doing a lot of filming, I'm 100% certain we could have
23:17got this to 300km, and I'm like 50% certain you could do like 400km on this if you perfectly
23:23used your time.
23:25Which is absolutely insane for a thing that has a range of 60 or 70km with just the batteries.
23:31And definitely, theoretically, infinite range.
23:45Obviously this has no real world practical purpose, at least not yet, but that doesn't
23:49mean there wasn't a lot of value in what was learned here and that knowledge can be applied
23:53to future projects, and I hope some people watching this video can use this as inspiration
23:58to try something that nobody thinks will work.
24:02As always, thanks for watching my video, and if you can, hit the like button as that greatly
24:06helps the algorithm boost these videos and fun future projects.
24:10I'd also love to know what you think of this rig in the comments below, or any ideas to
24:13make it better.
24:14And until next time, thanks for watching.
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