Peter Holderith was on a mission to unleash the full potential of the DIY electric quad kart as a platform. This isn’t his first rodeo either. His previous vehicle designs were great educational fun, but were limited to about a kilowatt of power. Its current platform is theoretically capable of doing this twenty. The last big change he made was adding more battery power, so that unused motors can stretch their legs a little, figuratively speaking.
How would that go? Peter puts it this way: “The result of (that) extra power, combined with other design flaws, is terror.” Don’t worry, no one was hurt or anything, but the card broke in a number of ways which highlighted some issues.
One of the goals of incremental prototyping is to bring problems to the surface, and it certainly did that. A number of design decisions that were good on go-karts proved inadequate once the engines got more power.
For one thing, the increased torque meant the engines freed themselves from their mounts. The throttle revealed itself as twitchy with poor response, and the steering wasn’t great. The steering got heavier as speed increased, but it also wanted to shake all over the place. These are very unwelcome feelings when driving a small, powerful vehicle that moves as soon as you press the accelerator.
Overall, one could say that the experience filled the proverbial to-do list nicely. Previous incarnations of the Peter the Kart were a thrilling ride, but the challenge of maintaining adequate control on a moving platform is a reminder that design decisions that get the job done under one circumstance may need to be reconsidered under others.
