My one and only automotive prototype to date is an apparatus that I designed for an Electric Vehicle that I bought in 2018. I picked up a 2015 BMW i3 with the REX option which stands for Range Extender. It was great car that I bought to check off one of my bucket list must haves. Generally I loved the car from a practicality standpoint, its rather funky look, and the fact that it was designed from the ground up as a high efficiency EV. It was the lightest of all the EV’s weighing in at 1300 kg boasting a fully carbon fiber body and a 650cc generator as the implementation for the Range Extender feature. It was one of only 2 series hybrids on the market and, in my opinion, outclassed the Chevy Volt. There were only 2 aspects of the vehicle design that I found completely annoying. First, the hide-away wiper orifice functioned beautifully as an 18 liter ice cube trough. I quickly learned the first freezing rain storm that extricating the wipers from the icy tomb was about as challenging as chiseling a Wooly Mammoth out of an iceberg. The second item was the EV Charge Port that was also very easily encumbered with ice especially when charging overnight out of doors during inclement winter weather. As for the icy windshield wiper tomb, I just bought a windshield cover which more or less worked. Unfortunately the magnetic buttons that it had sewn into the boarder of the cover were completely useless on a carbon fiber body so I incorporated suction cups which worked reasonable well. As for the EV charge port, there was nothing whatsoever on the market to solve that one.
The EV charge issue needed a ground up design. The primary intent was to build something that would mimic a covered deplaning ramp that would cover the open port plus the door so that neither could be affected by snow and ice. Here’s what I came up with
The device consists of a custom form fit frame that seated into the orifice with the door opened. The sock like cover was riveted to the frame allowing the right hand opening door to also be inside the sock. The string when snugged down on the charging wand creating a protect cozy space.
Here’s a live view of it in action. It worked really well. I used it for 3 seasons prior to selling the vehicle in 2022. The other thing that was great about using it year round is that it hid the opened charge port from street view during overnight charging so it doubled as an anti-vandalism guard.
Check out the video I made that shows how the apparatus was applied and removed after charging.