Wireless Charger Truck Mod Keeps Juice Flowing On The Move

Wireless charging is great tech, but its relative novelty means it may not be everywhere you want it. When one of those places is your vehicle, well, you make like [Braxen McConnell] and crack it open to install a wireless charger!

After dismantling the centre console, [McConnell] had to make a few cuts behind the scenes to make room for the wireless charger — as well as cutting down the charger itself. He also took apart the charger and flipped the board and charging coil around inside its case; the reason for this is the closer the coil is to …read more

Continue reading Wireless Charger Truck Mod Keeps Juice Flowing On The Move

How Much Of A Battery Pack Does Your Electric Car Need?

[Elon Musk] recently staged one of his characteristic high-profile product launches, at which he unveiled a new Tesla electric semi-truck. It was long on promise and short on battery pack weight figures, so of course [Real Engineering] smelled a rat. His video investigating the issue is below the break, but it’s not the link that caught our eye for this article. As part of the investigation he also created an online calculator to estimate the battery size required for a given performance on any electric vehicle.

It’s not perfectly intuitive, for example it uses SI units rather than real-world ones …read more

Continue reading How Much Of A Battery Pack Does Your Electric Car Need?

Enlarged Miniature Forklift

How do you classify something that is gigantic and miniature at the same time? LEGO kit 850, from 1977 when it was known as an Expert Builder set, was 210 modular blocks meant to be transformed into a forklift nearly 140mm tall. [Matt Denton] scaled up the miniature pieces but it still produced a smaller-than-life forklift. This is somewhere in the creamy middle because his eight-year-old nephew can sit on it but most adults would demolish their self-esteem if they attempted the same feat.

[Matt] has been seen before building these modular sets from enlarged LEGO blocks, like his Quintuple-Sized …read more

Continue reading Enlarged Miniature Forklift

Spice Up Your Shop with a VW Pickup Wall Decoration

Seeing a half car is always a disconcerting experience. Especially when that half car is about 14 feet up in the air. [PanasonicModelRC6015] — We’ll call him [RC6015] for short — has gone and mounted 1/2 (actually more like 1/4) of a VW Rabbit Caddy pickup MK1 up on his shop wall.

The caddy started life as a regular 1983 VW pickup. Unfortunately, the years had not been kind to it. The body panels were in good shape, but there were serious rust problems in the floors, strut towers, rockers, and control arm mounts. According to [RC6015], this is beyond …read more

Continue reading Spice Up Your Shop with a VW Pickup Wall Decoration

Automate the Freight: Robotic Deliveries Are on the Way

Seems like all the buzz about autonomous vehicles these days centers around self-driving cars. Hands-free transportation certainly has its appeal – being able to whistle up a ride with a smartphone app and converting commute time to Netflix binge time is an alluring idea. But is autonomous personal transportation really the killer app that everyone seems to think it is? Wouldn’t we get more bang for the buck by automating something a little more mundane and a lot more important? What about automating the shipping of freight?

Look around the next time you’re not being driven to work by a …read more

Continue reading Automate the Freight: Robotic Deliveries Are on the Way

Automate the Freight: Robotic Deliveries Are on the Way

Seems like all the buzz about autonomous vehicles these days centers around self-driving cars. Hands-free transportation certainly has its appeal – being able to whistle up a ride with a smartphone app and converting commute time to Netflix binge time is an alluring idea. But is autonomous personal transportation really the killer app that everyone seems to think it is? Wouldn’t we get more bang for the buck by automating something a little more mundane and a lot more important? What about automating the shipping of freight?

Look around the next time you’re not being driven to work by a …read more

Continue reading Automate the Freight: Robotic Deliveries Are on the Way