AOL Good News Now : WENG Motors

Grad Students Make Affordable Electric Vehicle
SUSANNA BAIRD
AOL

(JUNE 9) -- A group of Stanford graduate students has designed a low-cost, low-speed, open-air electric vehicle for neighborhood travel.
The Weng ("Where Everyone Needs to Go") looks like the offspring of a dune-buggy and a golf cart but represents the latest technology and, its creators hope, a viable travel option for the near future.
Five graduate students in Stanford’s Joint Program in Design, a collaborative mechanical engineering/art/art history degree, created the vehicle in nine weeks. They included components reflecting a diversity of concerns -- social, environmental, mechanical -- and the tenets of human-centric design.
Weng co-creator John Stanfield told AOL News that the project was born of a question: "Why are people using 6,000-pound internal combustion motors to drive themselves to the grocery store? … It’s incredible overkill."
The Weng’s tubular motors are small. Each brushless hub motor fits inside one of the back two wheels, leaving more space up front. The motor controls are hidden underneath two leather seats, which resemble Vespa benches, two to a seat, and four to a Weng.
What few parts there are -- motor, wheels, throttle, speed control, batteries, brakes -- are visible. Fewer parts means cheaper vehicles. The current model cost approximately $10,000 to build. Fewer parts also means fewer parts wearing out, which means fewer expensive maintenance costs.
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The initial Weng charges in four hours and uses regenerative brakes that recharge the car every time the driver brakes.
The driver steers with a forward/reverse switch and a tiny thumb control that resembles a joystick. The driver and the other front-seat rider hold a giant handlebar. All riders plant their feet on wooden floorboards. The whole crew enjoys open-air exposure to their environment and community.
The team wanted the vehicle to promote interactions.
"If you think about riding a motorcycle or a bicycle, and the feel of being part of the community while transporting yourself is powerful," says Stanfield. "You can wave to people. You can see your surroundings."
Stanfield and his partners -- David Goligorsky, Andrew Murphy, Brian Ng and Karen Shakespear -- graduate Sunday, but their work continues. A venture capitalist firm gave the team money to work through the summer. Four members will stay at Stanford to focus on improving their design.
Many of the changes involve transforming the Weng from a (admittedly spectacular) graduate school project into a viable, marketable product. The vehicle already can be customized with different motors and batteries to reflect the user's desired speed and power. Now, the team wants to figure out what else people want.
To that end, they plan to take the Weng to car shows and contact what Stanfield calls "extreme users": people who love cars, people who hate cars, and people who love alternatives to cars. such as bicycles.
"That’s the feedback that’s really valuable, people who are really enthusiastic, either positive or negative," Stanfield says. "We need the 'Hey I love it!' and 'Hey, I hate it, and here’s why.' "
They also need to address climate. Drivers in New England might not feel inclined to socialize when open-air Wenging to the grocery store in February. If future funding comes through, the team will bring in a safety engineer to ponder seatbelts, child passengers and the like.
To obtain future funding, the team has engaged Graeme Waitzkin, a student at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who also holds a master’s degree in engineering management. Waitzkin currently is writing a business plan for the next phase.
Waitzkin’s academic headquarters are about a mile from those of the engineering team. When he’s ready to present the business plan, he can hop on the Weng and be there in 10 minutes, waving to passers-by all the while.
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