Cooler Scooter

Designed and manufactured ridable cooler scooter that reaches 28+ mph and turns on a dime. Features a functional 70 can cooler compartment, led lights, and over 20 miles of range. Utilizes readily avalible electronic skateboard components, a dismantled kick scooter, and custom controls. Often seen cruising Golden Gate Park.

Details

Role: Personal Project
Dates: Spring 2020 - Summer 2020
Vision: Design and construct a high power, multifunctional, eye-catching electric vehicle.

Goals

Easy to use (steering and throttle)
Maintain cooler functionality
Safeish
$500 budget while reusing old parts

Gallery

Design and Process

First Steps: With prior experience with electric vehicles, preparation was devoted to inspecting commercial cooler scooter options. Many designes revolved around a custom cooler housing the controller and battery which was placed on to a custom frame with a brushed drive motor. While these designs served as good inspiration, they lacked the desired speed, stability, and functionality.

Initial Design: Too keep costs low, the initial design used a $40 140 can Igloo cooler with the inside divided in half by a waterproofed piece of plywood. The rear would house electronics and battery and the front, with an added drainage hose, would be used as a cooler. This would then be secured on a 2x4 with the e-skate components fastened at either end. The user would steer by leaning to either side like a skateboard.

Tests and Modifications: The first design was incredibly unstable and had a turning radius of a mini-van. To increase stability, the legs of a tri-wheel scooter along with a steel bar (spring) was added to the base. This greatly increased stability with a wheel base width of nearly 3ft, but reduced the turning radius to that of a double length bus.

Final Design: To stablize the vehicle, the frame was made into a T shape with the skateboard trucks attached at either end. To decrease turning radius, an old Razor kick scooter was sacrificed, cut in half, and added to the front of the cooler. The scooter is stable at nearly 30mph and can turn on a coin.

Powertrain: The scooter is powered by three recycled Xiaomi m365 scooter batteries, wired in parallel to form a 10s9p 37v 24Ah battery pack. When hooked up to the ESC and motors on the skateboard trucks, the scooter outputs nearly 1500 watts for snappy acceleration.

Addons: To make the scooter cooler, led lights which sync up to music were added to illuminate the drinks. Additionally, a 48v-12v DC-DC converter and usb outlets were added to keep all devices charged.