Awesome News! Desert Fuel Team chooses Altima!

[AZhitman]

As many of you know, i'm involved in a team competing for the Automotive X-Prize...

Our team, http://www.desertfuel.org, has finally selected a platform to serve as the test mule and competitive entry in the Mainstream Class.

Team Desert Fuel, after careful consideration of numerous potential platform candidates, has chosen to work with a 1994 Nissan Altima. This particular car provides us with several attributes - A flexible FF configuration, relatively light weight, a good CD (coefficient of drag), readily available parts, and plenty of room for our energy recapture technologies.

You've read a lot about some of the entrants in the Alternative Class, but there's not a lot of press coverage for those of us building cars for the Mainstream Class.

Read more about the Automotive X-Prize here: http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/

...and meet the team of Desert Fuel here: http://www.desertfuel.org

We'll be keeping you guys updated on our progress as we transform this sedate sedan into a world-class, 100+ mpg prize winner.

[jdshift]

Thats freaking AWSOME!! Hopefully the Altima can take your team to the promise land, good luck!!

[LongBeachCoupe]

NICE!MPG FTW!

[Rev_D21]

Nice, I love the U13!

[xeene]

this is fascinating, going to keep my eyes on this thread.

$10 million prize

[AZhitman]

We'll be posting updates and possibly looking for some input from YOU GUYS in the coming months....

In the meantime, we could REALLY use some help getting eyeballs on the Desert Fuel page, so send a link to all your friends... One of them may forward it to our next big sponsor!

[mcheddadi]

awesome! let the forwarding begin!

[AZhitman]

Mehdi, we could TOTALLY use some help with Photoshopping the car...

Hit me up via email if it sounds like something you'd like to take a shot at!

[AZhitman]

...bump for Mehdi...

[mcheddadi]

oki Im back! yeah I could try that!

email me the details!

[rotorimp]

So here is a picture of the 94--what a beauty--amazing what a few hundred bucks will get you



This is going to be a hybrid car with a 2.0l 16v VW TDI 240ft/lbs of torque motor in the trunk turning a 3 phase 500v generator. threre will be a electric motor that is identical to the rear generator up front Driving the wheels

Here is the motor



Here is where we are going to stuff the TDI motor and generator.

[AZhitman]

Mehdi, what we'd like is some different renditions for proposed aero enhancements... mostly for press purposes.

Maybe a front 1/4 and 3/4 view, showing the front signals, grille, intake and such smoothed and faired-in... Some rear wheel skirting, some aero wheel covers (smooth discs), lowering, and feel free to throw out some of your own ideas.

When we're done, we're going to "wrap" the car in vinyl, rather than painting it... Feel free to design something for that as well, keeping our "theme" in mind....

[mcheddadi]

what do you think about this :

[AZhitman]

Awesome start - We're losing the grille and bumper lights, and won't need air intakes up top...

[mcheddadi]

?

[AZhitman]

NICE.

Now, we need more views of it...

And a different color (tan? green?)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... Altima.jpg

There's a good big pic...

[mcheddadi]

here's some crazy green paint scheme:

[rotorimp]

I like it can you put our logo on it?

From our site or I can sent it to you

http://www.desertfuel.org

Looks awsome

[mcheddadi]

I like it can you put our logo on it?

From our site or I can sent it to you

http://www.desertfuel.org

Looks awesome

this one?

[rotorimp]

Yes with or without the cactus--we can do a wrap on the vehicle-in the end to match!!

[rotorimp]

Got some work done in the engine bay

Before--Dirty



All clean ready for trans/electric motor



Trunk--before



5min with the plasma



Mark giving the fuel tank the evil eye

[mcheddadi]

Awesome! I love following builds like that

[rotorimp]

Got allot more winding done this weekend. We are winding our own electric motors since the off the shelf motors don't fit our needs and if we had one make it would cost 20K+ so this is the third loop of oue 3 phase ac motor.

here is the winding barrel i made. It takes the wire off the spools and wraps it around the barrels. In the end each motor will have 31 miles of wire in it.



here is the finished loop. takes three to make 3 phase power. this is not going to be your run of the mill electric motor it will lay waste to my Skyline powered 240sx.

[rotorimp]

We got the last of the winding done for the electric motor. There is a total of 31 MILES!!! of wire in each motor. Here is the mold for the windings.



Here is how each of the windings lay down in the tray.

[adidas2go]

As an electrical tech, I can highly appreciate this

[rotorimp]

This is a very fun project--have you checked out the X-prize site?

We have 2 electrical engineers and one mechanical engineer on the team--We have some really cool stuff we can't show right now!!!!! this car will get better than 100mpg in TRAFFIC with the AC running and 4 adults in the car. Simulation shows us getting better than 170mpg on the Hyway. We have more goodies than just a electric motor to show off.

[adidas2go]

Wow, that's incredible. Well I'm taking a trip down to Mesa soon. Isn't the project in Phoenix? Maybe I can check out the project while I'm down?

[rotorimp]

Sure--let me know when you get here

[AZhitman]

Looking forward to it, Blake.

We're making some real headway on the powerplant configurations for the Desert Fuel Altima.

Updates on the way!