The Chibikart is the brainchild of Charles Guan, a student going for his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s been tinkering with robots since 2000 when he was inspired by the Battle Bots tournaments. The Chibikart is the latest of his collection of awesome projects. It’s driven by 4 custom wound hub motors in 100mm skate wheels.
In the center of the frame is a 300 watt-hour battery pack made by A123 Systems which is a company started by an MIT professor. They supply lithium-ion batteries for a lot of high performance R&D electric vehicles, the Fisker Karma and the upcoming Chevy Spark.
Charles estimates the kart will hit 21 mph with him on it, but has yet to do any top speed trials. It definitely looks like it has some pep in the hooning video:
You should definitely head over to Charles’s blog called E To The Pi Plus One to see all of the details on the build of the Chibikart and his other projects.
