Electric supercar

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

This is a new limited production Finnish electric supercar which is nearly ready for the market now. The car was originally designed and built to utilize a V-8 petrol engine, however, a few year ago a decision was made to develop an alternative electric drivetrain powered by high-density batteries, so the majority of the rear half of the chassis was altered to accommodate the new components there.

New CNC-milled aluminum uprights, A-arms, door hinges and other smaller custom components were also designed in the recent years to further optimize the weight and performance of the car. The car uses plenty of 3d printed parts, which are purposely designed to break in a small-speed car crash to reduce or fully eliminate the damage of the connected carbon-fibre body panels. Last summer the regular door gas springs were replaced with powerful hydraulic units activated via a remote control.

The NURBS modeling of the exterior was done in Rhino 5 back in 2014. Since then the development of the door jams and internal mounting panels behind the exterior (also known as “body-in-white”), chassis, suspension and lots of mechanical components took me a few extra years. Some of the later parts since 2018 were made in Rhino 6, and currently I use the new Rhino 7 for the design of the last remaining components such like window actuators, latches and a few others.

[seghierkhaled]

Very nice work

[Normand (Jakob Normand)]

Super impressive as always, @Rhino_Bulgaria!
-Jakob

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Thank you, guys! Still trying to learn more about the modeling in Rhino. You know, it’s a never ending adventure.

[pou010 (Luc)]

Nice, thank’s

[Philip]

Hi @Rhino_Bulgaria! Very impressive work! That has certainly been a long-term commitment Are you the designer of the car? I didn’t find any design- or other info on their websites.

Philip

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Thanks! The main website is not accessible yet. However, there is a secondary website in progress, which haven’t been updated since last year, but at some point there will be plenty of information added to it once the car is fully ready for the market. The majority of menus and stuff there is just placeholders and can’t be clicked and opened for now.
https://www.tritiumautomotive.com/

I’m the sole design engineer for the project, this is why it tool so long to develop the car. There were many changes and constant improvements and use of better components, so there was nobody else to take part of the CAD work other than me. With a skilled team of 5-10 designers the development would be much faster, but also much more expensive.
The new front bumper was primarily designed by another person in a rough shape, and I had to improve it for a better visual appearance, changed the proportions to make it match with the rest of the body design language, and made the angles and details manufacturable (it had many straight extrusions and sharp areas that were impossible to manufacture with carbon-fibre technology and easy to break). Here is a rendering of the rough bumper made by that other designer. The request was to tone-down the aggressiveness of the design by using less inclined surfaces that would not attract too much attention by the other people (in Finland wealthy people are nice and down to Earth persons, unlike wealthy people in the majority of nations who are fans of ostentation and have an over-inflated sense of self worth):

Here is the original bumper I made back in 2014 that looked like a shark. The front end looked much wider and lower with the old bumper:

[AlW]

@Rhino_Bulgaria

unlike wealthy people in the majority of nations who are fans of ostentation and have an over-inflated sense of self worth):

So why don’t you tell us how you really feel!

Have you done any crash testing or pedestrian impact tests, or all the other delightful things that governments require? How about fuel economy?

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I actually felt really nice in conversations with all the people there, including wealthy ones. As I mentioned, they are very nice and humble. And quite friendly and intelligent. It was a really good experience for me. I know several wealthy people from other countries (including my country) who are the exact opposite, if you know what I mean.

All the government tests on the car are made right now and I don’t take part of them, as I already moved back to my country Bulgaria and work from home - just like most people use to do since the pandemic.

Due to some changes in recent years, the requirements to validate a car as a road legal vehicle are much more strict now and that forced us to change the design of the headlights and tail lights. The headlight projectors had to be raised a bit and moved more forward and towards the center of the car, because the original design with clear headlights covers didn’t met the new requirements by couple of degrees. The headlight projector must be seen diagonally from a 3/4 view at specific angle, for safety reasons if there is another vehicle coming from the left or right side.
Also, the old projector was about one centimeter lower than the requirement, so I raised it as much as possible. However, that caused the removal of the clear headlight covers and using a 3d printed housing surrounding the exposed projector, because there was no free space left for the cover. The latter had to be changed with a new unit specifically designed for exposed use (i.e. without a separate cover). There are many older cars with lower headlight projectors, because they were manufactured in less restrictive periods.
The new headlight projector only had a single function as a low beam (unlike the old unit that combined both, high bean and low beam), so I ended up with the decision to use two extra high beam projectors behind the front grille.
The positive thing about that was the ability to use the free space below the raised headlight projector to add an integrated air intake to feed the front brakes with some extra fresh air.

It’s this sort of unexpected changes that take a lot of time for modifications, but the law was changed during the development and we had to follow the new rules. There are very strict rules for the seat belts, too. And visibility from the driver’s position. Things that were allowed before are no longer possible for OEM cars. In the future any new car must be equipped with side air bags, too.

[Gijs]

thanks for sharing your work here. I’ve seen parts of it previously in other threads but it deserves it’s own place for sure. Massively impressive clean modeling and design work!

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

A good part of this is thanks to Rhino’s great set of tools and unmatched ability to customize virtually everything in the interface.

[Gijs]

Haha, you’re far too humble. It’s a remarkable achievement regardless the software you used. I can tell it’s a culmination of hard work, dedication and persistence to get things like these done.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Trust me, if I had to work with the default interface of Rhino, I would feel like a rookie and would work really slow. I praised Rhino’s great customizability, because it lets everyone to arrange icons or even draw custom ones and put macros inside, in order to speed up the work significantly by allowing a quick access to the most needed commands. I don’t think that any other CAD program offers such amount of freedom.
You are right that it takes a lot of patience to work on the same project for years. Sometimes it got repetitive and boring, especially for things that were already designed and then needed to be changed at the last moment due to the government requirements.

[Philip]

@Rhino_Bulgaria

Thanks! The main website is not accessible yet. However, there is a secondary website in progress, which haven’t been updated since last year, but at some point there will be plenty of information added to it once the car is fully ready for the market. The majority of menus and stuff there is just placeholders and can’t be clicked and opened for now.
https://www.tritiumautomotive.com/

Thanks! Yeah, I actually already found that site (without all the important info - that’s why I asked).

@Rhino_Bulgaria

I’m the sole design engineer for the project, this is why it tool so long to develop the car. There were many changes and constant improvements and use of better components, so there was nobody else to take part of the CAD work other than me. With a skilled team of 5-10 designers the development would be much faster, but also much more expensive.

That’s really, really impressive! A lot to do for only one man…

@Rhino_Bulgaria

(in Finland wealthy people are nice and down to Earth persons, unlike wealthy people in the majority of nations who are fans of ostentation and have an over-inflated sense of self worth)

I’m not so sure about that… We do have those ‘overinflated’ people here too (I’m from Finland).

I was wondering… If this is an electric car - do you really need those big side air intakes?

Oh, one more thing… I’m sorry to say this, but… even if this is an almost unbelievable achievement as a one man job, I can’t help thinking that the car looks a lot like the Lamborghini Aventador.

Philip

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Well, I don’t know everybody in Finland and by no means I have a deep knowledge about the people and country there other than my personal experience that I collected in 5 years, but the people who I met there over that time were super nice to me. Everyone was kind and open to conversation, and from outside I was unable to tell whether a person is wealthy or not. They all drove regular cars, wear regular clothes, have good manners and sense of humour. This is in a big contrast to many wealthy people in other countries who like to pretend how much money they have and act as if they are superior to the others.

With regards to the side air intakes, initially the car was developed as a petrol car with a V-8 engine and large transmission that required also large radiators for the cooling. At some point the car was tested on a race track nearly to its limits and a decision was made to lower the working temperatures under load to prevent overheating in warmer countries. So, I had to redesign a portion of the roof panel behind the doors to increase the size of the side air intakes.

You are right about the body, even though I always try to do my own original shapes. As a freelancer I follow the wishes of the customer, so I do what I’m requested to do and paid do to. For example, my next task will be to develop my own supercar project in Bulgaria and I will have a full artistic freedom about the defining characteristics of the car.

There is a fun fact that about 21-22 years ago (1999-2000) I sent dozens of design sketches to Lamborghini and several years later I saw that their new cars borrowed design elements from my ideas. Attached here is just a small portion of them. Notice the shape of the air intake and the panel gap between the rear fender and side air intake on the first drawing and a few others. Also, the distinctive shape of the bonnet, front air intakes, crease lines between doors and front front fenders, air ducts behind the side air intakes and other details that nowadays you can see on most Lamborghini models in different variations. I will not post my best examples, because they consist some design ideas that I want to use on my own projects in the future.

PS: Not sure why some of the drawings got rotated sideways. They appear properly on my PC and haven’t been rotated in a program.

[TomTom (Tom)]

This is really impressive. If you think about the fact that usually thousands of people are involved in creating a full vehicle, it is even more impressive. While I can imagine to deal with the shell of a car, I really wonder how this works with the powertrain, software etc. Is this car based on a different model, basically “just” replacing the looks or is this a complete new development?
Somewhere I have read, that its planned to only sell 11 highly customized cars, for 1.1 Million € each. If you think about having only such a “small” budget, its even more incredible. But I guess its exactly what is needed today in such an inflexible industry. Great work!

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

That’s right, the car is planned to be made in just 11 units, with a very high level of customizability which is not just limited to rims, paint and trim colours and upholstery material (the usual custom things offered by other sports car makers), but also expands to: different front and rear bumpers and side skirts designed upon customer request individually, plus optional rear wing, different style for the side flaps, side air intakes and engine cover, different headlights and tail lights, etc. Every body panel except the permanently attached roof could be replaced with a different one.

The prototype car shown on the photos above was assembled and disassembled countless times, and used to have a V-8 engine in the past and currently has electric motors and 7 high-density batteries. That concept proved to be quite user-friendly for maintenance and offers a quick access to the internal components. The car is designed from scratch and is not based on an existing platform. Every major component is being upgraded to make the car better. The production cars will have thinner and lighter hand laid carbon-fibre prepreg body panels, replacing the carbon-fibre with epoxy resin on the prototype. Currently, new electric motors and batteries are installed that will offer even better range and performance. The electric drivetrain allowed us to find enough space above the batteries for a secondary trunk to store two bags with golf sticks. That was a customer request that was a bit challenging and seemed impossible initially, but luckily after some re-arrangement of the batteries and electronics inside the the space was just enough to also include a rear trunk despite the low body of the car. Electric batteries offer a lot of freedom in that regard.

The team is quite small but everyone is passionate and devoted in what they do. Currently, other people work on the car now on welding, assembly, painting, carbon-fibre work, tuning the software, sound system, electrical system wiring, leather upholstery and some other aspects of the car. I only did the 3d design and engineering of the car and tooling prior the physical assembly.

[Philip]

@Rhino_Bulgaria

As a freelancer I follow the wishes of the customer, so I do what I’m requested to do and paid do to

Yeah, that sounds familiar…

@Rhino_Bulgaria

For example, my next task will be to develop my own supercar project in Bulgaria and I will have a full artistic freedom about the defining characteristics of the car

Please tell us more about this project (when you can) and good luck!

@Rhino_Bulgaria

borrowed design elements from my ideas

That also sounds familiar - unfortunately. Has happened to me too…

Philip

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

For the moment I can only show these teasers of my own project, because I want to unveil the design when the car is already built and ready for the market. The design was made in 2007 but despite its age still holds up pretty well even today.

[Philip]

Exciting!

Philip