Solar PV Electric Tricycle (+ Top Green Living Stories)
August 10th, 2011 by Zachary Shahan
This is pretty cool. A young dude from Pakistan with a creative spirit has created a solar-powered electric tricycle. Farrukh Khan spent about $550 to create the bike and may eventually sell it. He’s provided a “detailed photo and a design template on the Instructables website for a small monthly subscription fee ($1.95 – 3.95),” Glenn Meyers of our sister site CleanTechnica reports.
The electric tricycle is called Solaron and Khan says that it didn’t even take him three weeks to create and build it, which he did at the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore in Pakistan.
Here’s some more information from Glenn:
The unit’s battery powers a 24-volt electric motor that drives the rear wheel using a chain and sprockets. Khan reports his Solaron can travel at a top speed of around 20 mph with a rage of some 43 miles before having to recharge – not a bad deal for inner city errands.
Unlike a traditional tricycle, featuring one front wheel, the Solaron has two front wheels and one rear wheel. A T-shaped aluminum framework makes up the front of the vehicle, with the back constructed from an old bicycle frame….
Khan’s Instructables website provides this information below for making a modified trike:
Here are the trike’s components:
- Chassis Solar Panel
- Motor Battery
- Steering Mechanism
- Chain and sprocket mechanism
- Charging circuit
Here is its configuration:
- Length: 7 feet
- Width: 3.5 feet
- Height: 4.5 feet
- Weight: 132 pounds or 60 kilograms
- Motor: 24 Volts DC, 17 Amps
- Battery: 12 Volts, 80 AH
- Materials: Aluminum, Steel and Cast Iron
Cool little tricycle. Let us know if you try to build your own!
Top Green Living Stories of the Day
Here are some more cool, green stories from around the internet (mostly the Important Media network) from the past day or so.
- Giveaway: Chia Seed Goodies from Health Warrior
- Seed Starting Adventures!
- Nissan Explains Leaf Battery (Video)
- Clever Accounting Lets Utilities Cash In When You Go Solar
- Top 6 Reasons Why Every Garden Should Have a Pond (Video)
- Natural and Organic Sewing Notions: A Resource Guide
- 5 Ways to Wean Off Plastic
- For Zimbabwe’s women, a bicycle can liberate
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About the Author
Zachary Shahan is the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular cleantech-focused website in the world, and Planetsave, a world-leading green and science news site. He has been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and he has been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, and wind energy since 2009. Aside from his work on CleanTechnica and Planetsave, he's the founder and director of Solar Love, EV Obsession, and Bikocity. To connect with Zach on some of your favorite social networks, go to ZacharyShahan.com and click on the relevant buttons.
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