Trev The Australian Electric Car

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Long before Tesla Motor cars, there was a guy in Australia who saw the stupidity of driving around in a big V8 just to go up to the shops. Back then people had to put together their own electric cars if they wanted to have freedom of electricity.

I always wanted an electric car but due to my circumstances I never had anywhere to build one so I always had to dream about the day I could drive around without polluting the crap out of the world.

Petrol, it really gets on my nerves paying for petrol its one of the main ways to enslave the population, it is taxed and the price always goes up, so its a money spinner for people in power and the oil companies.

I need to get around, I need to go out and get food, so I am forced to pay for petrol to get around. I don’t like it because of the environmental destruction it is causing.

I care about others and don’t like to see people suffering bad health due to pollution of the environment, what sort of world are we leaving for our kids to clean up?

I live in the environment and would like to breath clean air and drink clean water.

Efficiency, a petrol engine is around 25-35% efficient where as an electric engine is around 75-80% efficient so right there you are saving energy just by using superior technology of an electric engine.

Torque is delivered almost instantly with an electric engine so they can leave a petrol engine for dead. Don’t believe search a few videos of Tesla drag racing supercars.

Maintenance, you don’t have to put oil and water in an electric car like you should with a conventional polluting machine so It saves you money right there.

So there are a few reasons why I have wanted an electric vehicle for a long time.

With the release of the new Tesla Roadster I can’t tell how much I want one of those.

Trev is a 3 wheeler and looks a little funny but it proves all my points and I wish I could build my own vehicle along these lines, it won’t look like Trev but would use similar construction techniques.

The NSW government is currently making it next to impossible to build a car so I am in a bit of a dilemma, I’ll never be able to afford a Tesla Roadster so I have to build my own car, yet the government that Taxes every kilometre I drive is making it very hard to build an environmentaly friendly car at the moment.

Trev was built with Aluminium composite panels and a fibre glass body, a team of students at the University of South Australia built the car and ran it in the 2010 Zero Race.

It is a lightweight car weighing only 300 kilos it can go 120kph and can go for 150k on a charge, they later upgraded the battery pack for better performance.

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&A=112925 for more information on the build.

Performance
In October 2007 we drove Trev from Darwin to Adelaide in the Greenfleet Technology Class of the World Solar >Challenge. For most of the journey, we drove 80 - 120 km at speeds of 80 - 90 km/h before stopping to recharge from >a generator. We completed the 3020 km trip in just over 6 days.
Our energy consumption was 6.2 kWh/100 km. Recharged from solar, wind or hydro, there are no emissions.
Electricity costs about $0.18 per kWh. The cost of recharging Trev is 1.1 cents per kilometre, so the entire journey cost >us $33 of electricity
It makes petrol look silly. Quote from http://w3.unisa.edu.au/solarcar/trev/

I am so happy to see a lot of interest in electric cars here on Steemit and the growing awareness of how great they are. With the release of the new Tesla Roadster and even more people waking up to what a fantastic world it could be with electric motoring, I pray and hope one day to drive my own electric vehicle.