Fully Custom Power System Demonstrator Trailer

Back in the early days, before we even had an alpha vehicle or any vehicle at all and I was the sole engineer at the company for about 6 months, the only thing we could really work on given the limited number of employees at the company was to create a prototype of our power system to prove out many of its functions and to also act as a test bench for running various load cases.

I conceptualized a prototype which involved us mounting all of our power electronics onto a trailer, but since not all the components were IP rated, I had to fit all of them into an enclosure to be able to essentially turn the trailer into a mobile power unit.

The goal of the trailer was the following:

• Deliver an MVP of the power system on a mobile platform that we could showcase to investors to raise funding for a series A.

• Have all aspects of the vehicle’s power system represented, this included:

  • A full 2kW of solar

  • Ability to AC Level 1 and Level 2 charge.

  • Ability to DC Fast Charge

  • V2L Capability

  • Perhaps also mount an electric Baja SAE car onto it to be able to do some “field testing”.

  • Safely distribute a full range of power from as low as 12V to as high as 400VDC.

  • Protect the components from the elements

  • Charge the HV Batteries from Solar

  • Keep the 12V Batteries Charged from the HV batteries bucking through the DC-DC converter

I ended up owning this project from start to finish including speccing out a trailer, CADing up all the initial concepts, buying the trailer, designing the layout as well as the enclosure for all the power electronics, building and assembling everything, figuring out the how to mount the HV batteries to the trailer, all the LV and HV harnessing, the support structure that holds up the solar canopy, and everything in between. The only part I didn’t design or build myself was the solar canopy that mounts onto the side walls. Everything else was done by me with the help and labor of some enthusiastic interns.

The end result was a fully custom power system that met all the requirements and we were even able to host an investor lunch whereby all the food was cooked by induction stove tops powered entirely off of our power system.