ElectricCar

With the electric car, the kit solves the problem of 'well what do you do with this electricity stuff?' by supplying a plastic molded kit car. The car stinks. The wheels don't touch the ground. The car is driven by a fifth wheel kind of hidden below the motor. Lame. Here, the user 'makes' the car. But the car doesn't really work, and the user didn't really make anything, but rather assembled something that was manufactured in China. Here, a better solution would be to have people either hack up a cheapie remote control car, or take a motor, some wires and maybe a propellor or something that can be attached to the shaft, and see what you can do with the electricity. It would also be possible to use the electricity to experiment with circuits. Nagle left a zillion red LEDs in the bins by the stairs. Hooking up some leds to the circuit and seeing how many you can light up in series or in parallel would be neat. Using the Fab Lab to make a car is a good long term goal, but I doubt it could be done in one session. It may be possible to fab up some motor holders or something like that which could be used to go towards a fabcar.

AlternativeEnergy

Links:

Tesla Motors makes an electric car - http://www.teslamotors.com/

Street legal electric cars - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

Chevy Volt - http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

zenn car - http://www.zenncars.com/