2400 Mile EV Built By High School Students After School Program
A group of high school students and their volunteer mentors are building a lightweight electric car out of an old, wrecked 1999 Reynard Champ Car. Then, they’re driving it across the country, stopping to charge every hundred miles. On this project, though, the car itself isn’t what’s most important.
The car is the creation of Minddrive, an after school program in Kansas City, MO that mentors students who are performing below their grade levels in traditional school environments. Students meet every other Wednesday and on Saturday mornings and learn about either automotive design or contemporary communications with mentors who work in their field of study. The auto design students learn computer-aided design, welding, and electrical engineering, while the communications students learn to promote the car as if the design studio was a client.
So far, the students and their mentors are on track to have a street-legal car that can drive the 2400 miles from Jacksonville, FL to San Diego, CA by their March spring break.
“We have installed our own brakes, because they’re much lighter than the ones that would’ve been on the Champ Car,” said program director Steve Rees. “The kids have constructed the wire frame that supports the skin, and they have done the wiring and the driveline.”
That driveline is a single-chain drive connected to an electric motor, powered by lithium-ion batteries that put out 96 volts. In order to make it across the country while drawing attention to the lack of a national charging infrastructure, a generator truck will follow the team providing rapid 40-minute dump charges every hundred or so miles. Rees acknowledges it’s not the next Nissan Leaf, but how technically advanced the car can be isn’t the point.
“We’re trying to educate kids. We’re not doing anything extraordinarily out of the box,” he said.
According to Rees, the goal of Minddrive is to get students interested in learning through hands-on projects. “We’re trying to take kids who haven’t been engaged in school and hook them to an expanded vision of what their future might be,” he said. When they return to their own schools, the hope is that they’ll be more interested in history, math and English — and have a sense of environmental stewardship as well.
It seems to be working. Last year, students worked on a wrecked Lola Champ Car, even testing it out at Bridgestone’s Texas proving grounds. Those students are now learning advanced 3D modeling and Solidworks, while a new crop of kids — equal numbers of boys and girls — are working on the Reynard. So far, four kids have graduated from the program and each one is employed or in school.
The communications aspect of the program is also helpful in teaching students to express themselves. In their cross-country trip, the team will stop every hundred miles to charge their car and meet with students from other schools, explaining how they designed the vehicle. In preparation, the kids have practiced presenting their work and answering questions about it.
“It works really well because the contemporary communications class can end up mentoring the students,” said Linda Buchner, who directs the communications program.
For the students, the process of building a car has taught them to set and meet goals, and their volunteer adult mentors have acted as valuable role models.
“The most important thing really is teaching kids through hands on, experiential learning,” said Rees. “Our kids do this because they’re inspired to be there every week, to work with adults and do hands on things.”
