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Electric Go-Kart: First Test-Drive

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The maiden voyage of our electric go-kart. Our field controller (the only piece of off-the-shelf electronics on the kart) broke, so it is limited to low gear with no capacitor brake/boost. Next time...

http://web.mit.edu/first/kart

Comments (2)

How many FET’s are on board? 300A at 16V is a fine effort!

Posted 11 months by Anonymous

Amazingly, four TO-220 MOSFETs, at about $4 a piece, is all it takes to switch 300A at up to 48V. You need at least two sets to do a half bridge, a good heat sink, and a fast gate drive circuit, but it’s totally feasible for about $100. For reference, the FETs are IRFB3207.

300A is a peak value and only lasts for a few seconds, but the FETs stay cool even with no fan. We had a few catastrophic FET failures from switching problems, but no slow thermal load failure. So I think it can probably handle at least 200A continuous, maybe even the full 300A with a fan. I was impressed, given the cost of similarly-sized commercial controllers.

Posted 11 months by scolton

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scolton

scolton

Genre: Engineering | Updated 3 months ago

Created
August 24, 2008 10:56
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