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Here are a set of plans for a street
legal, affordable, and dependable solar powered scooter from Don Dunklee.
The PV panels fold in for driving, and out for charging. Don rides the
scooter 5 miles to work each day, and can fold the panels out for charging the
battery while parked at work.
Download Plans - Part 1 (2.5MB pdf file) Download Plans - Part 2 (3.8MB pdf file) Modification/Improvement to plans...
If you have any questions on building the scooter you can email Don here: organicgrower@earthlink.net
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Here are a couple updates from Don on how the Solar Scooter is doing:
April 2009: <-- NEW
The scooter still flying. Survived a long winter with only a couple of issues. Scooter was left in the weather, uncovered this year as a test of the quality of EVT materials in rough conditions. The gray plastic is fading with sun, (will polish with some form of auto restoration chemical) but the new seat cover survived one of the snowiest winters in a few years. The panels are well balanced and were unfurled all winter. Despite winds in a storm this winter that bent the metal frame and ripped the plastic off of a 14 x 72 foot hoop house less than 100 feet away, the bike never tipped.
I will need to get new batteries this year as they fade in about 9 miles of driving, but these are the original batteries. They have been outside for the entire life of the bike, (no garage) so that probably says the charging system is doing fine at protecting the batteries. Keeping speed/battery drain steady is probably a help as well.
April, 2007:
Scooter is "flying" still. I understand soon to be in Home Power magazine...cool.
I am still on the original batteries as well, the solar seems to be gracefully keeping the gel cells well charged and I see no change in range yet going into the third season. This includes the batteries being out in the winter weather for the season. Had a big storm take down trees within 200 feet of the scooter and the bike remained standing with no problems. The sunshine does seem to fade the plastic body panels a bit, and I will need a new seat cover, but Armor All fixed the color on the plastic and the vinyl for the seat is not a big deal. I did not cover the bike for the winter to see what would happen. Snow, Rain, Mother Nature at her best and all is still well :) .
March, 2006:
The scooter at season end was used for 104 trips to work over the time frame of April 15th to October 17th. This was 1,100 miles of solar charged travel. During the winter the scooter was plugged into my house array so the 120 watts of solar could be added to my house, thus allowing year round use of the panels. The rig stood up to winter wind gusts and snow loads, including gusts of over 50mph, with no damage.
April, 2005:
Just an update......I just passed 900 miles of solar charged commuting. I last plugged the bike in on April 15th, 2005. That works out to over 80 trips back and forth to town. Largest packages carried home were 55lb bags of seed for my farm. Ride nice on the foot area.
