Children of the rEVolution

A select few of you gentle readers will know I’ve been working on a project, on and off over the past few years, to design & develop an electric powered, 3 wheeled vehicle, targeted at the commuter market. This is partly because I think it’s a way cool idea, and I want one for myself, and partly because I think it is a mighty fine idea from an environmental standpoint. If you look at the numbers, something like 80% of commuting journeys are less than a 30km round trip, and of that 80%, a further 80% are undertaken in single occupancy vehicles. So why do we continue to use 1500+kg, 5 seater, inefficient gas guzzlers to undertake these journeys? Largely from habit, and due to the vested interests and marketing clout of the auto and oil industries, I suspect.

There is a small but growing group of people who are of a like mind to me, and one who is way ahead of the game, is Mark Murphy, the man behind Blue Sky Design. BSD is located in Creswell, a small country town a short drive south of Eugene, and Mark is in fact the very reason I’ve come to Eugene.

A lot of my design ideas have been shamelessly lifted from the Electrathon community, and Mark’s Aerocoupe racer design had long piqued my interest. After messing around with my own design ideas, and dealing with the reality that there is a huge gap between these and my ability to execute them, I realized that the Aerocoupe was perhaps 70% of the way towards what I was after. All it needed was suspension, a bit more ground clearance, and MORE POWER.

I exchanged a few emails with Mark, outlining what I had in mind, and suddenly a bunch more pieces of the puzzle fell into place: Enter the BugE!

The BugE is Mark’s latest creation, and another big step in line with my earlier thinking. I’d say great minds think alike, but the big difference is that Mark, a former design engineer with BMW, has turned his ideas into reality. Ever the pragmatist, I figure no point in reinventing the wheel when better minds than mine have paved the way.

Mark’s immediate response to my idea of modifying the original Aerocoupe concept was to suggest mating an Aerocoupe body with a BugE chassis. Bingo! A quick mockup in Visio looked very promising in terms of overall dimensions, and so a visit to BSD very quickly became a top priority on the Road Trip agenda.

This afternoon I had the very great pleasure of meeting Mark in person, and I think it’s fair to say we hit it off straight away. Not only was he very receptive to my thoughts, it turns out that he has a very similar concept in mind for the next phase of BugE development… as Mark says ‘Something a little more extreme’. Sounds like a bit of me all right (insert evil grin here).

So, all going well, this paves the way for a bit of trans-pacific collaboration, which I hope will be both a lot of fun, and useful to us both. I can hardly wait, and am looking forward to the makings of a next generation BugE accompanying a ‘vette back to N.Z.