The converted 1967 Triumph Spitfire (July 28, 2009) |
DENVER, Colo.—
They took a 42-year old car back to the future. A team of University of Colorado Denver students converted a gas guzzler from the 1960's into an all-electric car for the 21st century."After you get going, the buzz of the speed control goes away and now we have quiet silent driving," said Stefan Elsener as he drove along a Denver neighborhood street.
Elsener is on the design team.
"This tells us how much charge we have left as well as how many amps we're pulling," Elsener said as he pointed at a gauge on the dashboard.
The vehicle can reach speeds of 75 miles an hour with an overnight charge on a standard outlet and has a 40 mile range.
The CU-Denver students are getting real life experience as mechanical engineers.
"Holding the parts in your hands and getting them to work together is different than running the numbers and saying this probably will work," he said.
"Even though they weren't available in 1968," said team member Keith Ray standing over the open hood, "This is all off the shelf parts that we put together that's what allowed us to keep the low cost of 75 hundred dollars. "
Overcoming 800 pounds of battery weight was a challenge, but they did it in eight weeks.
"It's cool driving down the road you get older guys who recognize that it's a '67 Spitfire," said Elsener.
"There's no difference other than there's no gas engine and it's quiet," he added.
A Boulder investor who paid for the project will eventually get the car. "This was a fun project and we put all this work into it and now we have to give it away," Elsener said, looking at the car.
Members of this team were also among the finalists for a national Mars Rover project.
They plan to use what they've learned on a new project to design robots to remove injured troops from the battle field.
