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updated October 9, 2009
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Student’s Passion for Electric Vehicles Featured by Wired.com
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Chad Conway believes the electric motor is the most efficient and practical
alternative to the internal combustion engine. It’s that belief that drove
him to rebuild a 1980 electric Comuta-Car and has fueled his passion to
study electrical and mechanical engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology.
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Behind The Wheel: Chad Conway sits behind the wheel of his
Comuta-Car, an electric vehicle that he uses as his primary means of
transportation when he's home in Duxbury, Mass. |
Conway, a sophomore from Duxbury, Mass., was recently featured in
Wired.com’s Autopia: Road to the Future online blog regarding his interest
in electric vehicles and the Comuta-Car that he drives as his primary means
of transportation to this day. He keeps well informed of developments in
battery technology and dreams of a day when super capacitors will replace
chemical energy storage.
Not surprisingly, Conway’s career goal is to work with an automotive design
team, engineering the world’s best electric vehicles.
Accentuating those dreams, Conway is the electrical team leader for Rose-Hulman’s
EcoCAR project, helping students redesign a sport utility vehicle to reduce
the environmental impact of vehicles by minimizing the vehicle’s fuel
consumption and reducing its emissions while retaining the vehicle’s
performance, safety and consumer appeal. Students from North America’s top
engineering colleges and universities are using a real-world engineering
process to design and integrate their advanced technology solutions into a
2009 Saturn Vue. He is also a member of Rose-Hulman’s Pi Kappa Alpha
fraternity.
Conway recently joined other EcoCAR project participants in honing his
engineering design and project implementation skills at the competition’s
fall training workshop in the Boston area. The five-day session, organized
by The MathWorks, will further sharpen Conway’s skills to successfully
implement the team’s designs and integrate subsystems into a functional
fuel-efficient vehicle.
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Unique Prom Ride: Chad Conway used his Comuta-Car to take his date to the
high school prom. The reconstructed 1980 electric vehicle was a high
school project. |
“The opportunity to work on the EcoCAR project and other sustainable
initiatives helped bring me to Rose-Hulman,” he says. “I wanted to get
real-world, hands-on vehicle development experience, and to get involved as
I was learning in the classroom. I like getting my hands dirty and working
as a team. I couldn’t have done that at other colleges, where their EcoCAR
teams are filled with seniors and graduate students. The EcoCAR project will
make me a better engineer.”
Conway is no stranger to rebuilding electric vehicles. In high school, he
reconstructed a non-functioning 1980 electric Comuta-Car, designed and built
by Commuter Vehicles, Inc. The two-person vehicle had leading-edge
technology for its time, with an aircraft-grade aluminum roll-cage and
plastic body panels. The car operates through a direct current electric
motor that is rated at 6 horsepower. The car's power source is a string of
eight 6-volt deep cycle high-output batteries. When fully charged, the car
has a total of 48 volts. The vehicle is capable of driving at up to 40 miles
per hour and has a range of 33 to 60 miles per charge. The original car was
equipped with an AM/FM radio, and that is the only luxury device in the
vehicle. There is no air conditioning, and the heat for the car is created by
running a fan across the electric motor, which gets warm during operation.
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Seeing The Future: Chad Conway, a sophomore majoring in electrical and
mechanical engineering, is electrical team leader for Rose-Hulman Institute
of Technology’s EcoCAR vehicle development project. |
“I love that car and wouldn’t give it up for the world. It is my pride and
joy,” states Conway, who drove the Comuta-Car to his high school prom. He
affectionately calls the vehicle “The Cheese Wedge” because of its bright
yellow color and distinctive shape. “It runs well, gets me where I need to
go and is very efficient to operate.
“I took on the project because I love cars. Then, I saw the technology and
how easy it was. I quickly became fascinated and wanted to know more. Even
though the technology is more than 20 years old, it is still very viable,”
he said.
Conway’s engineering experience also features a summer internship at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Laboratory, where he assisted
a Smart Cities Group that’s designing a prototype of a lightweight electric
vehicle that can be cheaply mass-produced, rented by commuters under a
shared-use business model, and folded and stacked like grocery carts at
subway stations or other central sites. It’s called the City Car.
“If it is kind of green and easier, I am an advocate for it, like Comuta-Car
and other electric vehicles,” the Rose-Hulman student stated. “These are
exciting times to be getting in the ground floor of developing sustainable,
electric vehicles. I believe that 2012-2013 will be the Year of the Electric
Car, when these vehicles will no longer be cutting edge, but common place.
Every day there is news about a new development in vehicle or battery
technology. I couldn’t be studying engineering at a better time.”
Read more about Chad Conway in wired.com’s Autopia blog at
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/back-to-the-future-in-a-1980-comutacar-ev/.
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