Better Than Tesla Cars: The Transparent Car

By Othman Ahmad

This document presents the possible technological advances that are better than those currently employed by Tesla cars. The core idea in producing a car that is superior to Tesla cars in technical terms is the Transparent Car. The Transparent Car is constructed out of transparent plastics. The most important of which are those of acrylic and polycarbonate. With the use of plastics, the whole body of the car will be molded in very few pieces and completely transparent forming an exoskeleton. The transparency increases aerodynamic efficiency, solar panel surface area, safety due to the visibility and strength, and ease of repairing because components are visible. The batteries are a mix of fixed and removable. The removeable batteries allow the option to equip the Transparent Car with batteries that are larger than Tesla cars and easy upgrading to the latest battery technologies. To allow high performance and longevity of battery life, a supercapacitor battery will be added to store enough energy to reach a cruising speed such as 100 km/h. To increase symmetry and reduce wire sizes, each wheel will have a permanent magnet brushless outrunner motor directly driving the wheels fed by separate sets of batteries. There will be no gear or steering mechanism. The steering will use vectoring which enables the smallest turning circle while also increasing hull space. The preferred suspension is air suspension because of the need to adjust the height of the vehicle as well as taking advantage of the air compressor to air cool the motors and batteries, while exploiting filed patents to reduce aerodynamic drag and increase collision damage resistance. There will be remote safety drivers to assist the self-driving systems because it will be impossible to provide a perfect autonomous system. The techniques used for self-driving will be primarily cameras and RADAR, like Tesla cars but with options for LIDAR, 3D map and public sourced maps. To test all these technologies, scale modelling will be used. A lot of inspirations for the design of the Transparent Car had come from the scale modelling community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Othman Ahmad
• Release date: Oct 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005681098

Othman Ahmad

Othman bin Ahmad is a professional engineer registered with the Malaysian Board of Engineers. He graduated with BSc First Class Honours in Electronic Engineering at City University, London in 1981 taking various modules which included Computer Engineering. Later in 1986, he completed his MSc in Information Technology where he finished various assignments which included two integrated circuit designs and a compiler. He worked as a Telecommunication Engineer at Telekom Malaysia Berhad, from 1981 to 2009 with breaks to complete his MSc and study leave at Nanyang Technological University from 1990 to 1993 where he also worked as a lecturer teaching Assembler and Loader. His main research as well as registered PhD topic was Computer Architecture. From 2009 he worked as a Senior Lecturer at University Malaysia Sabah for the Computer Engineering Department teaching Computer Architecture. Retiring from UMS in 2021 as an Associate Professor in the renamed Electronic Engineering(Computer) program.His was awarded the ASDK by the State Government of Sabah for contribution to Sabah. He had completed many Telecommunication projects which include solar powered rural communication, and transfered to all the various engineering departments. He had published conference papers and journals which include indexed publishers. He has self published only in eBooks at both Smashwords and Apple Books using research materials that include his own papers either published by other publishers or not.He has filed 6 patents at UKIPO, USPTO and MYIPO, with a few of them granted with titles such as Zero Energy Transportation System, Zero Aerodynamic Drag Vehicles, An Optimum Hybrid Vehicle, Optimum Collision Damage Reduction System, Imperfect Perpetual Motion Heat Engine and Simplest Word-size Scalable Processor. Despite their controversial topics Zero Aerodynamic Drag Vehicles and Imperfect Perpetual Motion Heat Engine were granted by UKIPO. None had been granted b USPTO but the reasons for rejection are just absurd so need to proceed to the Supreme Court of the USA to get approval.He is active in self publishing in eBooks such as Smashwords and Blogs. eBooks allow more structured and thorough reading but Blogs and discussion groups allow instant backup of articles and views on certain topics which had come handy for inclusion in the eBooks.The author may seem to cover a very wide topics but they were actually part of his expertise and hobby. Road Traffic enginneering is just an adaptation of Telecommunication Engineering and research results were actually published in conferences. Mechanical Engineering topics were just basic physics subjects that are part of the basic course in an Engineering Course and so are Management Courses, which should include an understanding of economics.

Book preview

Preface

The objective of this book is to introduce the designs that can improve Tesla cars for reducing losses. The most important motivation is to save the environment which was the motivation for Elon Musk in producing Tesla cars. Tesla Inc. is not the biggest car company in the world but Tesla Inc. does not produce cars only so it is not really a fair comparison. The design compromises made by Tesla Inc. in designing the Tesla cars are therefore sound commercially but they may not be the best for the purposes of reducing losses.

In order to save the environment even more, we should try to improve car designs to be even more efficient while not reducing the chance for commercial success such as costs and comfort. I had started designing for the sake of it and managed to publish a paper, Optimum Low Friction Energy Saving Car, e-Transactions eJUM, 2011, University Malaya.

The design had been improved in the years after this but the eureka moment came when I was preparing for a proposal for a set of Integrated Design Projects for our computer engineering course. Car design themes had been a favourite final year project proposal for me but they do not lead to the major breakthrough in design. A transparent car.

The Transparent Car came about when I looked at Arduino based robot cars that are mass produced for the hobbyist and educational market. The base of the car is made of Acrylic and it is transparent. This led to more research on the choices of materials and techniques to design a complete car for our students to design and build.

In order to preserve the memory of the eureka moments, I have decided to write them in the form of a book. It may be possible to patent a few of the ideas but they are risky and costly as experiences with patent offices shows. Presenting in conferences and design conventions are also not that effective in disseminating information but much more costly.

I had used Twitter to encourage the Tank turns by sending suggestions to Bezos, Elon, and their companies two weeks before the Tank turns by Rivian was demonstrated. It was just an unlikely coincidence that Rivian had thought of the Tank turns before my Twitter messages. However, I was blocked by Twitter because of my opinion and refuse to retract that view, so I have abandoned Twitter. Facebook had temporarily blocked me also but I have decided to stop Facebook as well. Any censorship or peer review is bad and will lead to idiocies such as what I had experienced unless the reviews are open, like Wikipedia. My article used to be deleted for really stupid reasons but luckily, I was able to reinstate them after engaging in edit fights and requesting for further reviews.

This book is a collection of ideas and projects that will implement a low loss car which is cheap to make. It can be called a transparent car. It will use solar panels, supercapacitors to achieve 1 to 100 km/hr speed in just 2 seconds. One reason why it can achieve this level of performance is due to its light and aerodynamic exoskeleton design devoid of any noisy and lossy gears and steerings. It will use air compressors for suspension as well as cooling and reducing aerodynamic drag. Better still, readers can implement all the designs themselves using a 1/10 scale model which costs 1000 times less.

These designs are based on patented inventions that are filed in Malaysia, UK and USA but a few had been in abandoned states. Many of the other ideas can also be patented so details may be withheld but it does not stop readers from using existing technologies to design a revolutionary car.

The Transparent Car uses existing technologies that are widely available. There is no requirement for special materials and techniques. It is the combinations of these materials and techniques that make the car unique and perform better than Tesla cars. Readers and my students should experiment with many iterations that can improve the car even more. There are many more inventions and designs that need to be made.

Targeted readers

Researchers who are willing to consider controversial viewpoints on established laws of Physics.

The public who have sufficient high school knowledge of Mathematics and Physics and are interested to broaden their understanding of the Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics and their applications.

Professional Engineers wanting alternative ideas to design energy efficient systems.

What the book is not

This book is not about advanced state of the art Mathematics and Physics.

This book does not teach Mathematics and Physics. It assumes a high school level of understanding of Mathematics and Physics.

Maximising the Use of This Book

This eBook is deliberately written in the electronic form. The contents presented in this book can be revised at anytime. This eBook is just a