Now was the task of installing the rear motor (electric) which would make our car, a hybrid one. For this, one of our friends had an electric scooter with a 750W motor in it. It was the best testing vehicle for us. Three of us sat on it and it was still running! This was perfect, because earlier we thought of which motor (what capacity) should be used and we would have to spend a lot of time on it which we didn't have because it was our final semester.
We went to a nearby dealer of electric scooters and explained our project to him. The nice guy was educated and was interested in this. He facilitated us with an old electric scooter which was in running condition but had some other problem due to which he wasn't using it.
Great for us! We dismantled the scooter, took out the motor and it's controller from it. Next, we used iron strips to create a mount for the motor on the rear axle and used a belt to transfer the torque from the motor to the axle.
Here are two pictures:
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| Rear axle and motor |
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| Another view of the rear motor |
Also seen here are small metal chips welded to the floor of the car so that we can screw the car seats on them.
Charging while running: One thing that hybrid cars must possess is that they should be able to charge the batteries while running. For this we conceptualized that we could use an alternator that is used in normal cars. It's like a mini generator which contains a rotor which rotates with the engine's rotor and generates direct current. We bought on and installed it later on.
By this time we had also started to explore the possibilities of how to put up the accelerator.
