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Don's Solar Scooter

Here are a set of plans for a street legal, affordable, and dependable solar powered scooter from Don Dunklee. The PV panels fold in for driving, and out for charging. Don rides the scooter 5 miles to work each day, and can fold the panels out for charging the battery while parked at work.

Download Plans - Part 1 (2.5MB pdf file)

Download Plans - Part 2 (3.8MB pdf file)

If you have any questions on building the scooter you can email Don here: organicgrower@earthlink.net

Here are a couple updates from Don on how the Solar Scooter is doing:

April, 2007:
Scooter is "flying" still. I understand soon to be in Home Power magazine...cool.
I am still on the original batteries as well, the solar seems to be gracefully keeping the gel cells well charged and I see no change in range yet going into the third season. This includes the batteries being out in the winter weather for the season. Had a big storm take down trees within 200 feet of the scooter and the bike remained standing with no problems. The sunshine does seem to fade the plastic body panels a bit, and I will need a new seat cover, but Armor All fixed the color on the plastic and the vinyl for the seat is not a big deal. I did not cover the bike for the winter to see what would happen. Snow, Rain, Mother Nature at her best and all is still well :) .

March, 2006:
The scooter at season end was used for 104 trips to work over the time frame of April 15th to October 17th. This was 1,100 miles of solar charged travel. During the winter the scooter was plugged into my house array so the 120 watts of solar could be added to my house, thus allowing year round use of the panels. The rig stood up to winter wind gusts and snow loads, including gusts of over 50mph, with no damage.

April, 2005:

Just an update......I just passed 900 miles of solar charged commuting. I last plugged the bike in on April 15th, 2005. That works out to over 80 trips back and forth to town. Largest packages carried home were 55lb bags of seed for my farm. Ride nice on the foot area.