Finally you get to see what we've been working on over here!
We work at a company called TTW S.r.l. (S.r.l., which stands for Società a responsabilità limitata, is equivalent to LLC in the US or Ltd. in the UK), which is based in the Politecnico di Torino. On my first day of work, the people at the Politecnico gave me some nice goodies, including maps of Turin and information about the city, as well as this bracelet,
whose clasp is actually a 1 gigabyte USB memory stick!
The company is rather small, and the work environment is friendly and relaxed. The team is developing a vehicle called TTW, which stands for Three Tilting Wheels. The purpose of this vehicle is to provide someone with a personal commuting vehicle that is smaller and more mobile than a car, but more stable and safer than a motorcycle.
I feel sketchy about taking pictures at work, so instead I'm providing photos that have already been released to the public. The two pictures below show what we call "the mule," which is a stripped down version of the vehicle that is easily modifiable. Once in a while, the team will take the vehicle out for a test run.
Here is a video of the TTW in action on the test track!
Here is a video of the TTW in action on the test track!The next picture shows a prototype of what the actual finished product might look like.
As you can tell from the seal in this picture, TTW is a team in the Automotive X Prize competition. In fact, it is the only team in this competition from Italy. The purpose of the competition is for teams to develop hyper-efficient vehicles that can get 100 miles per gallon of gasoline equivalent. The competition will culminate in a race in New York City in the summer of 2010, with a total purse of $10 million. The division we are in (alternative/tandem) has a purse of $2.5 million.In addition to working on the vehicle, the group is working on using the hybrid technology that will be used on the TTW on other vehicles. They are currently in the process of hybridizing a Volkswagen Golf, and the next car we might try this on is a super-compact car called the Tata Nano.
This car recently made its debut in India, and is designed to be a very cheap (less than $3000), minimalist city car.
To make the car as compact as possible, Tata got pretty creative with layout, placing the engine in the rear of the car and the battery underneath the seats. My current assignment is to design and create a layout for the hybridized version of the vehicle. So far, this has involved lots of research and use of CAD (computer aided design) software. I wonder what will be the next step after that...
If you're curious about the things mentioned in this post, here are the links to the relevant websites:
No comments:
Post a Comment