.png)
August 2024 Newsletter
- Jee Kim
- Apr 4
- 3 min read
As we begin approaching fall, we want to share some great news, updates, and recap the final month of our summer internship at our Portland lab!
We’re pleased to announce Natalia Amijo as our new Creative Director of Product Design!
Natalia brings 13+ years of professional experience to the team, having created groundbreaking products and designs that blend technology, ingenuity, and elegance. She’s worked for Renault, Ford, and formerly at HTC Creative Labs as the Industrial Design Creative Director.
She previously worked at Lit Motors as the Transportation Designer & Strategist (Jan 2014 - Oct 2015), and had a key role in developing the 3rd Gen Lit Motors C-1 exterior design references, visual representations, and branding/sales strategies.
Her work is deeply rooted in industrial and transportation design, and she challenges conventional thinking while designing products that will enhance audience connections and improve lives.
We’re thrilled to have Natalia’s expertise and experience in project management and automotive design on our team!
🛞 SAS
The goal this fall is to reduce the risk in the last technical hurdle, which is our Stability Augmented Steering system, or SAS. In parallel to other efforts, the team has started iterating on the specific details of the steering solution.
We’re researching off-the-shelf components to determine the size of the steering system and the architectural requirements, and we’re exploring different ideas for the steering mechanism and how to implement the redundancy for our fail-safe mechanical steering.
The objective is to continue with steering iteration/design, attempt to perform some motion studies on the integrated steering/suspension systems, and validate our steering and suspension system are within the acceptable bump steer spec, and this will be the foundational step towards building the developmental chassis.
At the same time, the engineering interns also explored iterations for the design of the gyros and the basering. (See below)
⚖️ Balancer Rig
Jee has finished fully assembling the dynamic balancer rig and has completed testing the photoelectric sensor and accelerometers. The next priority will be to reduce signal noise and EMF interference caused by the DC motor. Then, we can tighten everything down in preparation for running some balancing tests with our sub-scale CMGs.
🛞 Pathfinder Chassis Development
We've been working steadily with our engineering interns this month in Portland to design our developmental mule chassis. We're implementing the CAD that we've been developing this summer with the supervision of Daniel and Stefan. The plan was to first translate the designs/measurements from CAD into a foam core template model, and then move into aluminum.
The goal with this part of the process was to start a basic iteration of the frame to determine any adjustments that needed to be made to the physical dimensions. In CAD, parts appeared at times a bit too large, but once translated to foam core, we could better see and understand the space needed for the mounting points, the CMG base ring, and the battery package.
The remainder of the materials arrived at the Portland lab this past week, and we went right into the preparation of the templates so we could begin drilling and cutting the aluminum tubing and plates ahead of the assembly and welding fabrication process.
We began translating the foam core mockups (based on the new CAD design) into aluminum. It's been amazing to see everyone working together to build this new chassis in the lab, and a great experience to share the fabrication, component assembly, and welding throughout the process.
With the summer coming to an end, we’re preparing to say goodbye to our engineering and industrial design interns; Akshata Jha, Chloe Ahn, Claire Peck, Colin Brace, Mahlynee Marino, Max Freeman, and Mohammad Ahmadi.
It’s been a wonderful experience working together, accelerating the developmental chassis design, and sharing skills and knowledge over the past few months! It'll be hard to see them go, but we're proud of them and thankful to have had them be a part of our mission.
With this progress going into the fall, we’ll continue fundraising for unibody, working to raise $5M that is necessary for the next round of development, with focus on the CMGs and augmented steering.
As we continue the development process, please help spread the word! We thank you for all your support and encouragement.
Warmly,
Daniel Kim
Comments