Electric van heading south for eRally

25 November, 2014

Electric van heading south for eRally

A team of University of Waikato engineering students will travel to Christchurch this week to showcase their electric van at New Zealand’s first electric vehicle efficiency rally.

The eRally event takes place on 30 November and is part of the larger Evolocity event run by the Association for the Promotion of Electric Vehicles (APEV).

The Waikato University utility van was originally powered by a 1.3 litre petrol engine, which was replaced by an electric motor.

The conversion process began last year with a group of fourth-year Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) students and has been continued this year by a new group of fourth-year students including James Watkins, Stephen Gibbons, Oliver Lord and Louis Gillen.

“Last year the student team worked to get the van functioning, while this year we have had the challenge of getting the van certified for road use. This has involved implementing a large range of safety measures to ensure the vehicle complies with the Low Volume Vehicle (LVV) standards,” says James.

The van was designed with a purpose of being used around the University of Waikato campus during the day and charged overnight.

“The drive down to Christchurch will be a great performance test run. We’ll drive the van as far as possible each day and then put it on a trailer for the rest of the day and charge it each night.”

The team is expecting the van to be capable of a top speed of just over 100km/h with a range of over 120km on one charge.

“The eRally involves a 21km course starting and ending at Christchurch’s Motorsport Park. Our Waikato team will be part of the ‘Electric Car Conversions’ category,” says team supervisor Association Professor Mike Duke.

The vehicle in each category that has used the least amount of energy while completing the course within the specified time frame of 30 minutes will be deemed the winner.

The van will be used around the university campus and fleet manager John Ireland says it will be interesting to see what sort of savings are achieved.

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