This week the focus is on starting the physical construction of the Mass-EV.
The workshop at Milford Road has been prepared for the construction of the Mass-EV base chassis.
Turbo Electric Ltd is also working with other businesses close by to prepare other parts of the Mass-EV.
This is started now to target prototype completion summer (Q2) 2012.
Since we are heading toward a real prototype we are going to need the ability the charge it's battery.
Today work has begun developing and testing the high voltage charger.
This will be used to charge the lead acid packs for the Mass-EV, but also can be used to charge Prius hybrid batteries.
At a cost of around £50 it will form yet another cheap, but reliable component of the Mass-EV.
You can follow progress on the
Recently Turbo Electric has been testing the new design of controller on a Prius.
This is to simplify development as a Prius already has the mechanical arrangement to test a controller.
The amazingly simple £600 controller performed much better than expected obtaining 10mph from a 12v standard car battery.
The car will be capable of motorway speed from the original 300v powerpack without requiring a fuel engine.
The full controller will be published once the patent application is processed.
Over the last couple of weeks a new controller is emerging from Turbo Electric Ltd which is radically simpler than anything currently used.
This new controller is designed with directly coupled gate driver circuits currently unheard of in the brushless motor world.
This could revolutionise the design of all electric vehicle controllers as it would make them far cheaper than is currently costed.
Details will be published as the patents are applied.
Turbo Electric has accepted a contract to work on one of Qualcomms embedded systems.
Since Qualcomm are involved in electric car technology they have also asked Turbo Electric to help with patenting.
The contract with Vitec will be renegotiated to enable the work to continue.
This will provide at least a further £40,000 of funding to continue the research.
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27th January 2012: Turbo Electric Ltd working with The Vitec Group plc
Today Turbo Electric Ltd accepted a contract to help
Vitec with some of their robotics projects.
This contract provides around £40,000 of funding to continue the ongoing research in controller and motor technology patents.
Some of this funding will also be used to develop the new car trading venture.
19th January 2012: Improved Controller Electronics will be Patented
Today Turbo Electric Ltd has prepared an improved design of controller circuit.
The circuit improves the
Simple Split-Rail Brushless Motor Controller by adding a class D push-pull driver stage.
This design reduces the load on internal components and increases switch speed in the controller.
Reducing the load means lower cost power output stages can be used (the most expensive part).
This makes the controller more efficient and also considerably lowers the controller cost.
Full details will be posted when the new controller design is filed.
10th January 2012: Oracle Corporation Withdrew Complaining Lack of Funds
Today Turbo Electric Ltd was told that Oracle have withdrawn from their contract.
Turbo Electric Ltd is now in discussion with Oracle as to what why they made the commitment and then consequently withdrew.
Whilst obviously an initial setback this will hopefully not impact the goal of having a prototype for 2012 summer.
9th January 2012: New Design of Controller will be Patented
Over the last week Turbo Electric Ltd has been testing a new controller concept for Brushless motor control.
This design adopts a drastically simpler algorithm than the industry standard direct–quadrature–zero (or dq0 or dqo) transformation used in AC synthesis.
The new algorithm currently is being tested on a 4Mhz processor requiring less than 1k of combined memory and can run at shaft speeds over 100,000 RPM possibly even up to 500,000 RPM.
The code is currently less than 400 lines of assembler so will be cheap to gain safety critical compliance.
16th December 2011: Turbo Electric Ltd working with Oracle Corporation
Today Turbo Electric Ltd has accepted a contract with
Oracle to work on an IT project of theirs.
Depending on the amount of work required on the project the contract will be worth at least £20,000 and may be up to £60,000.
This will provide funding for the rapidly approaching first Mass-EV prototype.
7th December 2011: Trakwerks collaborating in turbine generator projects
Today Turbo Electric Ltd discussed with
Trakwerks details of prototyping the
Decoupled Turbine Generator and
Multistage Micro-Turbine Generator Projects.
We agreed to start the engineering and testing of these project in January 2012.
Once these patents are tested and experimental data is assessed, Turbo Electric Ltd will be moving ahead with the
Impulse-EV supercar project.
1st December 2011: Local motorsport company interested in collaborating
Today motorsport company
Trakwerks approached Turbo Electric Ltd with a view to collaborating on projects.
Trakwerks is run by professional motorsport engineers who are great car enthusiasts.
They expressed interest in the potential of electric power in a performance vehicle about which Turbo Electric Ltd is also very enthusiastic.
28th November 2011: Starting car sales
Starting today Turbo Electric Ltd is trading hybrid and electric cars.
This will create market awareness of the Turbo Electric Ltd brand name.
It is also an opportunity to gain valuable experience of customer needs and maintaining a good reputation.
25th November 2011: Preliminary EV controller tested
Turbo Electric has successfully completed phase one of the patent low cost EV controller.
Phase one is a low technology, dumb controller to prove the basic electrics and software.
This was successfully tested on a Prius as a replacement for the HSD to power the Prius as an electric only vehicle.
This means moving on to Phase two which involves full motor output control.
Also Turbo Electric are looking to prove the high-RPM, low-cost BLDC motor patent before January next year.
This motor will be part of the prototype power chassis being build in January 2012.
7th November 2011: Moving to new premises
Turbo Electric Ltd is now located at
Milford Road.
Keys were obtained today and the experimental vehicles and equipment are being moved there this week.
You are quite welcome to come and see.
A webcam is planned also.
25th October 2011: Micro Turbine Patent Submitted
Finally the design for the multi-stage micro-turbine has been submitted.
This is a revolutionary design which should reach the goal of a viable micro-turbine engine for electric cars.
It is a complicated design involving multiple compressors and turbines, a large heat exchanger and it's own ECU.
An experimental prototype will be built once Turbo-Electric Ltd moves to it's new premises early November this year.
This engine is targeted at the
Impulse-EV supercar project, but a "range extender" unit will be built for the Mass-EV also.
14th October 2011: Low-Cost Controller Patent Submitted
A design for a new
low-cost brushless motor controller has been submitted.
This is in keeping with bringing new low cost technologies to make the Mass-EV possible within the target price.
This design has been almost fully proven in the
The Mass EV Electronics Lab so this is almost ready for production.
12th October 2011: Workshop Premises Secured
Given the requirement for several vehicles to be worked on concurrently, Turbo Electric Ltd is moving from it's current workshop in west reading to a 1,500 sq ft unit on Milford Road Trading Estate, Reading.
This is nearer to the centre of reading close to Rivermead Leisure Centre.
This will enable rapid building of the prototype Mass-EV and conversion of the EV0 as well as the EV conversion of the White Gen 1 Prius shown on the
Research Lab pages.
11th October 2011: Further funding phase complete
A further small funding phase for Turbo-Electric Ltd is now complete.
This means Turbo Electric Ltd with now move into another engineering phase.
Watch this space.
7th October 2011: Turbo-Electric Talking to the new generation
Turbo-Electric Ltd has been invited to talk about the electric cars as a local primary school.
This is a nice opportunity to inspire future scientists, engineers and users in what is widely accepted as the future of motoring.
3th October 2011: EV0 upgraded
Project
EV0 has been upgraded due to design issues.
The original Fiat 126 EV0 is upgraded to a Daihatsui HiJet EV0.
The decision to replace the Fiat chassis with the Daihatsui van chassis was due mainly to weight problems.
The Fiat chassis was found not to be capable of supporting the weight of a heavy electric motor and battery.
The Daihatsui HiJet was purchased over the weekend and work will commence to convert it this week.
13th August 2011: EV0 completion started
The project which started all this now named
EV0 is heading toward completion.
This is a Fiat 126 purchased about 3 years ago with the intention to turn it into an electric vehicle.
Fiat 126 is a very small car which is powered by a 650cc 2-cylinder air cooled rear petrol engine.
A milk float motor will replace the petrol engine which is extracted from the now scrapped milk float.
This will be fitted some time this week.
29th July 2011: Prototype Chassis Fabrication to start soon
Today Turbo Electric Ltd has commissioned building of the prototype power chassis.
A local company have committed to building the chassis and are due to start work soon.
They have also interesting ideas for the body which they may be able to fabricate in aluminium rather than fibreglass.
19th July 2011: Full prototype funding obtained
Today Turbo Electric Ltd obtained full funding for the Mass-EV prototype from their bank.
This means construction of the Mass-EV prototype will commence this month.
It is hoped that this prototype will be completed before the winter this year.
This prototype will include of all patent technologies to date plus further patents will be pursued on the complete powertrain due to its unique combination.
27th May 2011: New design of micro-turbine
Today Turbo Electric Ltd is preparing a new design of micro-turbine building on the design of the
Decoupled Turbine Generator.
This is a multi-stage version of the single-stage Turbine Generator capable of high efficiency at low speeds.
The micro-turbine will be capable of in the region of 150kW max output.
Two of these will be used in the
Impulse-EV turbine-electric supercar.
8th May 2011: New supercar design project
Given the market investment attracted by high performance electric vehicles, Turbo Elecric Ltd has started a new design using Mass-EV patent technology called the
Impulse-EV.
This will be a hybrid vehicle with a design specification of 200mph, 0-60mph in 4 secs, yet still attain 100mpg and have a range of 500miles.
Power will be provided with a petrol version of the patent decoupled gas turbine generator to provide the
one MegaWatt of electric power for the 4 high power patent electromagnetic brushless motors.
4th February 2011: ST extended contract with Turbo Electric
Due to the success of the work so far,
ST Microelectronics offered to further work with Turbo Electric. This will provide an additional £26,000, which means a full prototype of the Mass-EV1 could be ready this summer. Turbo Electric is also preparing
further patents to protect the unique powertrain of the Mass-EV1.
27th October 2010: Turbo Electric working with ST
Turbo Electric have signed a contract to work with
ST Microelectronics to work on some of the microprocessor systems for a range of future products. This will provide a further £26,000 prototyping funding and invaluable systems experience. ST have more than 20 years of
experience in the automotive market, including
Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Solutions.
28th June 2010: Turbo Electric working with the Beeb
Turbo Electric have signed a contract to work with
BBC Research and Development to work on the
Ingex Project. While not strictly about electric cars, this will provide £45,000 prototyping funding and the Ingex project is currently being tested in the studio of the BBC program Dragon's Den (which may open up it's own doors!)
18th May 2010: Graham North to speak at London Transport Museum
The
London Transport Museum have contacted Turbo Electric Ltd to ask for Graham North to speak at a breakfast event in October. Turbo Electric will have a prototype available for viewing in London. More details available as they are finalised.
UPDATE: This is postponed until the new year.
23rd Mar 2010: Next stage for Mass-EV patents
The first
2 Mass-EV patents will be published within a month. These are the "Brushless DC Motor without Permanent Magnets" (GB1001919.8) and "Brushless Motor Resonant Controller" (GB0904679.8). A third is also expect to move to the publishing stage some time this week.
4th Mar 2010: In the news again!
The Mass-EV Project appeared again in
The Reading Chronicle again. The piece tells of the 3 patents and how I'm using a milk float to prove the range and speed of the powertrain. I wil add the piece as soon as it's available online.
3th Mar 2010: International engineering company involved
Turbo Electric is currently talking to
Goodrich about the application of two
Mass-EV patents "Brushless DC Motor without Permanent Magnets" (GB1001919.8) and "Decoupled Gas Turbine Generator" (GB1001921.4).
11th Feb 2010: Green Party Conference
After speaking to Adrian Windisch (Reading Green Party candidate) Turbo Electric Ltd will be at the
Green Party Spring Conference 2010 on 18th to 21st February. Turbo Electric is looking to work with green organisations including the Green Party in the design of the car.
8th Feb 2010: Website tidy
The website has had some minor improvements to make it more pleasing. Some overhaul of the underlying code was also cleared up to fix some issues with new browsers.
5th Feb 2010: 2 more patents
Today Turbo Electric Ltd filed
2 more patents relating to the Mass-EV.
That makes
3 in total: "Brushless Motor Resonating Controller" patent (filed 19th March 2009), "Brushless Motor without Permanent Magnets" and "Decoupled Turbine Generator" (filed today).
28th Jan 2010: Going full time
Graham North now goes full-time on the
Mass-EV project.
Previously, He was in other contracts and only part-time on Mass-EV.
