Hydrogen Fuel Cell Go Kart - Eiffel Project
Electric vehicles developed over the course of a year at Ecole Centrale Paris, with the crazy challenge of integrating hydrogen fuel cells onto those vehicles.
Complete go-kart with the hydrogen fuel-cell and the hydrogen storage on the back. The hydrogen storage was voluntarily undersized for safety reasons.
Team: Alexandre Jais, Louis Charvet, Guilermo De Coux Gonzalez, François Marechal, Michail Mitsouridis, Nicolas Parisot, Pascal Morenton
Location: Ecole Centrale Paris
Date: September 2011 - June 2012
Role: Vehicle Architecture Design, CAD, Component Selection, Mechatronics.
This was my final project at Ecole Centrale. Our goal was to learn as much as possible about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and then try to build the best vehicle as possible using this technology. We started, thinking that we would customize an RC small-sized F1, but as we gained the interest of external partners we ended up with additonal funds and materials that allowed us to move to a larger scale vehicle: a competition go-kart.
Our job was then to electrify that vehicle, adapt the drive-train for our new propulsion system, create some simple control electronics components and adapt a hydrogen fuel-cell and reservoir system that we purchased onto the vehicle.
An incredibly fun and very ambitious project that proved very rewarding in the end.
Task list (in French)
RC Formula 1
Initial test RC vehicle
Assembling and getting the model to work was our first task.
Bare RC test vehicle
CAD iteration for testing the integration of the different components
Chassis customisation on the RC vehicle for the adaptation of the electric motor and the fuel cell.
Simple arduino hack whose goal was to convert the RC signal for acceleration and deceleration into something understanble by our controller.
Competition Go-Kart
Initial drivetrain of the go-kart. Internal combustion engine and basic clutch on the right.
First electric go-kart prototype using lead-acid batteries.
Drive-train adatation for the integration of the electric motor.
Test-driving the electric go-kart.
Next steps for future years included the integration of supercapacitors.
Workshop Pictures
