Dyson Award for students’ EV trike
A group of six industrial design students from Massey University in Wellington have won a national James Dyson Award for their electric cargo trike.
Daniel Shorrock, Chris Warren, Fergus Salmon, Zoe Lovell-Smith, Liam Avery and Oscar Jackson are all working towards a Bachelor of Industrial Design degree.
They say they were inspired by sports bikes and the increasing trend of Kiwis moving to more sustainable vehicles.
‘‘We know New Zealanders care about the environment and think they would feel better if they had an electric trike delivering their parcel rather than having a van in their driveway,’’ says Shorrock.
The winning trike and two runner-up entries – the ‘‘Nah Yeah Buoy’’ adaptive rip-current warning system and the ‘‘BOU’’ kitset ride-on for preschoolers – now progress to the international stage of the James Dyson Award, with the potential to win up to NZ$55,000 for the team and NZ$9000 for their university.
The national entries will be judged by a panel of Dyson engineers who will select an international shortlist of 20.
The top 20 projects are then reviewed personally by Sir James Dyson, who selects the winner.
Dyson is a world-renowned British inventor; his company is perhaps best known for its hi-tech vacuum cleaners.
But Dyson is also a global technology company with engineering and testing operations in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Britain. One of its current projects is an electric vehicle.
The Kiwi trike team identified a gap in the ‘‘last mile’’ courier market that is dominated by fossil-fuel vehicles.
They say traditional delivery vehicles cost companies and consumers in a range of ways – the fee has to cover road taxes, petrol, parking permits and time, and also lost productivity while sitting in traffic and finding vacant loading zones.
The environmental impact is also well documented with governments around the globe committing to a reduction in carbon emissions, particularly in bigger city centres.
According to NZ Post’s Full Download Report 2019, over 60 per cent of all online purchases are delivered to customers living in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch; 1.8 million Kiwis made online purchases that required delivery in 2018, and 44 per cent of those online shoppers purchased more than once a month.
The team says the electric cargo trike is significantly different from any existing fully electric cargo delivery vehicle, with the design focusing on handling and driver experience.
‘‘The last few kilometres are the least efficient in the delivery process, and we wanted to create a safe vehicle that addresses that problem,’’ says Shorrock.
‘‘We had four main prototypes, over 10 CAD [computer-aided design] models, and countless sketches and Lego models getting to this final product.
‘‘We spent hundreds and hundreds of hours over 12 weeks trying to make this the most effective, safest, and easy vehicle to use and we think we finally got there.’’
The range of possibilities including use on farms.
‘‘We see this working well within an agricultural context,’’ says Shorrock. ‘‘Potentially replacing quad bikes with a vehicle that is much safer.
‘‘The tilting mechanism makes it much harder for the vehicle to roll over and injure the driver.’’