e-scooters · Electric Scooter · Electric Scooter Design ·

DESIGN OPTIMIZATION

CHASSIS AND SUBSYSTEMS

The fundamental component that ensures the safety and smoothness of your electric scooter journey is the chassis or the main frame. The chassis not only supports your weight but also provides support to the equipment and the accessories that are vital to your electric scooter functioning. These accessories include[1]:

  1. Battery
    Battery is the equivalent of your gas tank, as it is the fuel that your scooter operates on. It is located inside the deck which is an essential part of your chassis.
  2. Controller
    This often-neglected part of your electric scooter is the paramount component in your scooter, as it translates your accelerator and brake lever motion into voltage signals for your battery to speed up or slow down your scooter. Controller is also supported by your chassis.
  3. Deck
    The core part of your chassis is the place you stand on when riding your scooter. Sometimes, it is rubberized to provide better traction to your feet. It also houses battery and controller, besides supporting your weight. Therefore, deck is designed after rigorous considerations and evaluations.
  4. Stem
    Another component of chassis is the stem. It is the long tube that connects the handlebars and the deck. The inclination angle of the stem tube will determine the stability and handling of your electric scooter. Also, extensive research goes into determining the optimum length of stem tube. The shorter stem might be effective for faster steering, but it compromises the stability. Stem tubes longer than optimum length can make the ride uncomfortable and steering difficult.

  

 

  1. Suspension
Suspension systems are necessary to ensure a comfortable ride. The bumpiness in roads can be a nuisance and excessive bumps can even cause loss of balance, making the rider fall. Therefore, suspensions systems attached to the chassis are paramount to your safety. See below picture showing a full suspension system on front and rear wheels of MANINAM Electric Scooter Model M2.

 

  

  1. Tires
Tires are the only connection between your electric scooter and the road. Therefore, extra care should be given to while connecting tires to the chassis. Tires are also coupled with motors that provide movement to your tires.

    1. Chassis must support all the dynamic loads.
    2. Chassis must support the driver’s weight in all terrains.
    3. It must keep the balance of the scooter.
    4. It must ensure stability by working towards the lowest center of mass.
    5. The design should keep the weight of chassis to be lowest possible.

    Therefore, our designers and engineers have worked to create a chassis that is lowest weighing without compromising the stiffness necessary for providing support to rider and subsystems attached to it. We provide a scooter with least vibrations that are generated by bumpy roads or excessive attachments to chassis. We have minimized the chances of breakdown of your scooter caused by fatigue and stress by keeping the attachments minimum, as it is evident from the fact that almost no attachments are visible to our rider. These fine researched design aspects make our scooter more durable, more efficient and capable of long-range journeys as compared to our competitor scooters.

    MATERIAL SELECTION

    To achieve this objective, our team selected magnesium alloys as the construction material for the chassis of our electric scooter. Magnesium, in comparison to materials used by other electric scooter manufacturers, is the lightest metal available for structural design. The higher strength, the lower density and machining ability make magnesium alloys a better alternative than the commonly used steel and aluminum alloys[3].

    Some of the key design aspects that make magnesium alloys a better choice are:

    1. Lower density (about two-third of aluminum)
    2. Higher weight reduction (20-30% more than aluminum)
    3. Higher resistance to impact loads than aluminum
    4. Better machinability
    5. Better recycling
    6. Higher dimensioning control
    7. Better damping
    8. Higher fatigue resistivity

    Based on these superior qualities of magnesium alloys over aluminum and steel, our electric scooters are manufactured using magnesium alloys. This gives our scooters a competitive advantage in comparison to other manufactures. The weight reduction gives our scooter longer range and higher battery efficiency. No other scooter has the driving range and durability that we have achieved by reducing the weight of our scooter.

     

    GEOMETRIC DIMENSIONING AND TOLERANCING

    Another important consideration in design optimization is the use of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing. Our scooter parts and systems are manufactured according to the standards set by American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). This exclusive feature of our scooter design not only optimizes the design but also makes the maintenance easy for our valued customers because of the wide availability of standard parts and tools.

     

    ATTACHMENT CONSIDERATIONS

    After designing an optimized chassis or the main frame for your electric scooters, the next step is attachment of subsystems to the frame. This is the crucial part that will control the stability of your ride. Therefore, our team has worked relentlessly to make sure your journey is comfortable and safe. The subsystems are necessary for the functionality of your ride but too many attachments can not only increase excessive load on your motors, rendering them ineffective and consuming more power, but these attachments can also cause excessive vibrations. Considering these aspects of design, our scooters are manufactured to provide the least number of attachments in comparison to other leading manufacturers to maximize comfort and safety for the rider but also to minimize failures due to fatigue and creep stresses.[4]

    We have created a meticulous design to ensure that our customers get the best scooter in the entire market with the best features.

    References

    [1]       “Ultimate Guide to Electric Scooters » Electric Scooter Guide.” https://electric-scooter.guide/guides/definitive-guide-electric-scooters/ (accessed Oct. 11, 2021).

    [2]       “Design and Analysis of E-Scooter Chassis Frame | Request PDF.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344172748_Design_and_Analysis_of_E-Scooter_Chassis_Frame (accessed Oct. 11, 2021).

    [3]       C. Thiagarajan, N. Lakshminarayanan, A. Anand, M. N. Santhosh, and N. J. Anderson, “Investigation and Analysis of Properties of Magnesium Alloy for Suitability to Electric Vehicle Components,” doi: 10.1088/1757-899X/993/1/012007.

    [4]       A. G. Deshpande, “Parameter study of bodywork attachments influencing the chassis dynamics by vibration response analysis,” 2018, Accessed: Oct. 11, 2021. [Online]. Available: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-232452.

     

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