Molded

After a couple months of hard work Craig smiled down on the complete body mold and commented, “It looks like we knew what we were doing.”

The mold is the pattern from which we will make the bodies for the production Avion. We will use a technique known as vacuum infusion to make a low resin parts. This will allow our production vehicles to be consistently light and strong. The catch is the mold has to be both strong and devoid of bubbles or it won’t hold up under vacuum. In a week we will know whether we knew what we were doing, or if looks are just deceiving.

Halfway to halfdone

We are halfway done with the main-body mold. This is the hardest mold, and the half way point for making the new mold for our X prize body. From this, messy, intimidating part covered in fiber glass; we will be able to make exact replicas of the Avion body for production. This is not only key for the X prize, but also for when Avion Cars start producing consumer cars.

IN other news, the Flow Scan meter we installed to monitor Fuel consumption, does not display above 99.9 MPG. This is a problem for us, since we stay pretty much pegged at 99.9, which means back to the drawing board.

No news is bad news

Well, thats what they say, and if a lot of investers come our way from the press, I wont complain. But let me back up a bit, so you know what I am talking about. Today we had two film crews at the shop. One was Sound Wise Studios (http://www.soundwise.net/) based out of Bellingham, they have been filming a documentry about the Avion. They have already put out one video about her:

As far as I could make out SWS was there to document the second film crews filming. Go figure.

The other group was filming for a popular German TV show. I can't spell the shows title but it sounded (and translated) as automobile. I always wonder what people expect when they come to see the Avion. We are located in this funky old barn, and there are only a couple of us working on the project. Well, whatever they think of the location (or us for that matter) the Avion always impreses them. I will post the link to the show if it airs online.

The Paper Work is Done!...for now

After many hours of hard work, word finagling, and little help from our friends, we put together a beautiful business plan and technical data submission. We hope this will keep the X prize people at bay for the next month or two.

Our plans for the summer? Well, we plan to have a new car up and running by the end of August. The new mold is almost complete, which means we are well on our way. For those who don’t know much about composites, a mold is what we use to make the actual parts (the composite piece that form the body), this means pulling (the creation of a composite part) a second body will be easy, as will making many more.

The other goal, along with the first, is to model the car. The Avion was built before 3d CAD software; we have many sheets of paper plans but it is hard to run a simulation or do FEA (finite element analysis) on paper plans. So, as we build the second car (Avion X? I like how it sound but Craig just laughed when I suggested the name) there will be frantic CADing to try and keep pace. By modeling the car we hope to lighten her some more and maybe even lower the CD. Our focus though, will be making the car look gorgeous, inside and out. More to come…

The Avion revs her engine, and coughs a little on the paperwork

As you may know, the Avion has entered the Progressive Automotive X Prize, in the alternative class. She will be competing against all sorts of hot-shots and big names like Aptera, Velozzi , and Tesla. While these cars may have caught some eyes, the Avion still has a lot going for her; not only is she light and dead simple, but she has 25 years of experience, on the road, to back her up. And on the road is where she wants to be, but in the genuinely accurate style of the FMVSS and the FHA, the Automotive x Prize requires a lot of paperwork. So for the last couple of days the Avion has been sitting in the shop with a glint in her eye, ready for when we submit our forms on Monday. In the words of Craig Henderson, “that’s when the real work begins”.