In 2014 I joined the Advanced Electronic Technology Center at UMass Lowell. My first ever Electrical Engineering project was a solar electric vehicle made out of PVC pipes! This was a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate that a small solar panel can reasonably sustain a low-weight four-passenger vehicle.
I joined the team at the relatively late stages of the project, so I mainly helped with design troubleshooting and the mechanical redesign. The vehicle was originally made as a two-passenger transporter and was added two additional seats at the back. This last-minute addition caused the front wheels of the vehicle to lose traction when all four passengers were seated, especially when the two back passengers were American (my Professor’s joke).
I spent a lot of time with junior and senior engineering students reworking the frame and grasping the electrical design aspects. The car was fully operational and we later proceeded with a second prototype that had an aluminum frame. We entered UML’s Difference Maker competition with this project where landed the second place (2015)!
