High School Car Sharks Sandpoint High Students Design, Build Electric Auto
Don’t fret too much over escalating prices at the gas pump. One day we’ll all be riding electric currents.
That’s the opinion of some Sandpoint High School students who have built an electric car in Gary Quinn’s engineering technology class.
“Electric cars in some form or another will be what people will be driving in the future,” said Nolan Clark, a senior who has worked on the car for two years.
Hardly futuristic in appearance, this car comes in a classic form: vintage 1929 Mercedes.
But under the purple paint job and lightning bolt detail lies a lot of ingenuity, not to mention 600 pounds of batteries and chassis parts from a Volkswagen and a Ford Mustang.
The four students who have been working on the car all year are looking forward to showing it off in this summer’s Lost in the ‘50s parade in Sandpoint.
“We’ll be the only electric car” in the parade, Quinn said.
The students have plenty of reason to be proud. Quinn said he knows of only one other full-size electric car built from the ground up in Idaho, although go-cart-size electric race cars are becoming a common teaching tool in North Idaho and Eastern Washington schools.
Clark and the other students who built the Mercedes had to take a class building the race cars first. The race cars are built for efficiency and are used to compete in regional contests. The car that goes the farthest in an hour on a 64-pound battery wins.
The Mercedes, on the other hand, contains 12 batteries, each weighing 50 pounds. Some of the batteries are in the back seat, but most are under the hood.
One of the challenges facing the students is how to recharge those batteries on the fly.
The students had to piece the car together to make it work with an all-electrical system. To put the motor in the back of the car required some innovation.
“We had to re-engineer the rear axle to fit the motor,” Clark said. The students wanted the motor in the rear for efficiency’s sake.
Clark, who experiments with electronics as a hobby, dedicated himself to making the electrical system work.
After finishing high school, Clark plans to study engineering, perhaps robotics. Clark is one of the few seniors at Sandpoint High who doesn’t have a driver’s license.
“It’s not about the car. It’s about the process,” Quinn said.
Lee Vanhorn, another senior and second-year student in the class, threw himself into making it all fit together in an attractive package. For him, a lot of it was the car.
Vanhorn, along with his cousin, Andy Brown, who also is in the class, wants to get a college degree in technology, then return to Sandpoint to start a custom car business.
“This is a chance for us to prove ourselves,” Vanhorn said. “It’s coming out great. … It really opened my eyes. I always thought gas engines were the best thing around.”
On Wednesday, Vanhorn was working on the housing for the emergency brake. The car still lacks an emergency brake, a speedometer and a few other details.
But it drives fine.
Junior Cole Gollen took the driver’s seat and turned the key.
Nothing. No starter turning over. No sound at all.
“It’s on,” Gollen confirmed. “Not much to it,” he added.
The students in this independentstudy class have had a lot of support to make the car possible. They got their kick-start with a $10,500 schoolto-work grant in 1998.
Bud Moon, a local classic car enthusiast, donated the Mercedes replica kit. Les Schwab gave the students a deal on tires. ParkerTaylor did the paint job. Encoder Products is helping with the datacollection system, which will include a laptop computer inside the car.
One reason the class won the grant was that the students already had demonstrated a partnership with local businesses, said Sherry Hatley, school-to-work coordinator for the Lake Pend Oreille School District.
The project also had to show it is sustainable even after the grant funds run out, Hatley said, adding that she is convinced the car will provide endless learning opportunities.
“The way those guys dream, in five more years, it could be flying.”