University students make electric car in 3 months

With their pocket money and the support of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), seven seniors from the Fırat University Department of Automotive Engineering produced an electric car named Fors for their dissertation project. Speaking to an Anadolu Agency (AA) reporter, Department Chair Yasin Varol said the students designed the car with only TL 10,000 ($3,723) and it took about three months. Praising the group's accomplishment, Varol said they designed an affordable electric car different from its other expensive examples. "The main aim of this project is to produce an electric car at a lower cost and they achieved it in less than a year," he said. Yunus Emre Akay, 23, one of the designers, said their electric car cannot go fast and it is not luxurious, but affordable. Akay said other electric cars in Turkey are much more expensive and their compatibility with Turkey's road conditions is questionable. "When we researched the current situation on the market, we found that electric cars cost too much. Anyone can easily drive our design, as it does not have a complicated transmission system and it is affordable. The car is well-designed and operates well even on slopes and hills," he said.

Prior to the beginning of the project, Akay said they searched for sponsoring firms and institutions but only found financial support from TÜBİTAK. He said financial constraints were the primary reason to create a car with a lower cost. "We collected our pocket money to design it. Weighing 400 kilograms, the car is for two people and has four forward gears and one reverse gear. It has a 26-horsepower electric engine and an automatic transmission. There are two separate winding mechanisms on the engine. One of them is fast and the other is slow. The car can reach speeds of up to 60 kilometers per hour with slow winding and 100 kilometers per hour with fast winding," Akay said.