Operation of the Lectric Leopard. Final report
The vehicle selected for the demonstration project is a Lectric Leopard built by US Electricar Corporation. The vehicle was unable to fulfill the intentions of the program because of continuous failures in the control system and an inability of the factory to fix them. Our requests to obtain circuit diagrams of the system so that we could make repairs ourselves were turned down, stating that this information was proprietary. The vehicle was demonstrated three times, to a student audience, Public Service Electric and Gas Company Day at Stevens and the Rotary Club of Hoboken; but because of the large amounts of downtime the vehicle only accumulated 900 miles over a one year period. In May 1981 we were informed that in a frontal barrier test, the rear batteries had broken loose delivering a second impact on the driver and dumping several gallons of acid into the occupant compartment. On the advise of DOE the vehicle has not been used since. If Stevens is permitted to keep the vehicle it is our intent to make it the subject of several student senior design projects to make the vehicle safe for use by containerizing the rear batteries.
- Research Organization:
- Stevens Inst. of Tech., Hoboken, NJ (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG01-79CS50121
- OSTI ID:
- 6162951
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/CS/50121-T1; ON: DE81026281
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Verification tests of the US Electricar Corporation Lectric Leopard
The SURE House (Solar Decathlon 2015)