What students find cool gets their attention. American needs a 400 mile range electric commuter car. But, tiny commuter cars are not cool. But, you can build a 300 mile per hour electric drag racers and they are cool, even if nobody actually needs one.
Racing has historically been the test bed for vehicle development. Electric drive is the best possible match of a power source to the task of drag racing. An internal combustion engine is the about the worst conceivable power source. A few electric dragsters, cars and motorcycles, do exist today. With small technology improvements, they could dominate this sport.
Currently the limiting technology for both dragsters and commuter cars is the batteries. A number of companies are claiming that they have the technology in their labs that will yield a times four to times ten improvement in batteries. If any of these claim pan out, the world of transportation will be changed forever. The world would change in the moment and this would be a big step to a sustainable world.
What is cool changes year to year. Robots are still in even if computer programming is currently out. Cool projects are important to get student involvement particularly those who do not see themselves as technically oriented.
We may need to put the students to work designing electric drag racers so that they will learn to design electric cars. Learning to design race cars has always been on the critical path to design people cars. After designing a world beating race car, design a commuter vehicle is a piece of cake.
Several full scale electric dragers and motor cycles have been built, but this approach is too expensive for a student project. What I have not seen is a study using models.
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