Electric car scores with efficiency and creates a bond between students, mentors
FORT STOCKTON, Texas — Who knew, back in January when seven students from Kansas City’s DeLaSalle Charter High School and 11 mentors huddled around the hulk of a well-used Indy car in a freezing-cold shop, that eight months later their project would be the talk of the country.
I was part of the group that hardly knew one another last winter. Over the next eight months this group became a band of brothers that gathered every Saturday morning to work on converting the single-seat Lola to battery power and designing a full-coverage body. The car they created is now getting national and international publicity for its efficiency. Who knew?
The project was the brainchild of Steve Rees, a retired Kansas City architect, former racer, sports car aficionado and part-time teacher at the school. In January, he challenged the group with a vision of an ultra-light, aerodynamic car with electric power. It was to be done by summer.
Students were Chan Brown, Andrew Deckard, Kelvin Duley, Zack Knighten, Kevon Mebane, Mario Ramirez and John Shaw.
Individual mentors taught classroom sessions on aerodynamics, physics and basic automotive terminology. The bond between students and mentors grew quickly once they began working on the car together. The students were not mechanics, and there was much to be learned. Adults took the lead.
We shaped a body using a thin wire framework covered by a transparent skin made from a heat-shrinkable material, a 3M product that is used to cover windows. Foam was layered over the skin to make a mold, and the mold was used to form a fiberglass body. The resulting body weighed nearly 200 pounds, so it was discarded, and we returned to the wire frame and transparent skin. It weighed about 40 pounds. A lesson: if at first you don’t succeed, try something else, but keep moving forward.
Bridgestone got involved by doing research to determine which of its tires had the lowest rolling resistance. They visited the school, supplied tires and wheels for the car and displayed the non-running car in their garage during the Indy 500. They offered their Texas Proving Ground track for testing.
Once the car was back in Kansas City, the drive system was completed and 21 lithium-ion batteries, rated at 180 amp hours, were installed. A donor supplied the batteries.
In early August, the car was hauled to Bridgestone’s test track in west Texas. This 7.7-mile oval is one of the largest in the world. Three Kansas City students, Duley, Ramirez and Knighten, flew to Texas along with local go-kart racer Natalie Fenaroli from Raymore. Ramirez and Fenaroli shared the driving. Six mentors were there as well.
Fenaroli and her dad, Matt, became part of the project during the summer months. She was selected as one of the testers because she has a competition-driving license even though she is only 14. Ramirez was the only DeLaSalle student on the trip that had a driver’s license.
On Aug. 10, the racer turned it first lap of the track. The car was geared to have a top speed of 42 miles an hour. The quest was to measure how far the car could travel per kilowatt-hour of energy used. The result exceeded everyone’s expectations.
Bridgestone engineers helped record data. Converting miles per kilowatt-hour into a miles-per-gallon equivalent is one way of measuring efficiency. The DeLaSalle car achieved the equivalent of nearly 300 miles per gallon. News of the car’s efficiency exploded around the Internet. A lesson: push through setbacks and you can achieve more than you imagined.
This improbable band of brothers had succeeded, and the fact that the car’s skin had no color was a perfect metaphor. We were family, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity, and the friendships that we built would have a lasting impact on each of us.
To see how the project was created, visit http://delasalleautodesignstudio.wikispaces.com.
