Low Cost Demonstrator as a Mean for Rapid Product Realization With an Electric Motorcycle Application

During the last decade, digital prototyping has become a natural part of any industrial project dealing with product development. The reasons for this differ, but the two most obvious is time saving aspects and the amount of cost effectiveness achieved when replacing the physical prototype with the cheaper digital. Time and cost are equally, or even more critical in academic projects. This paper describes the usage of a low cost demonstrator as a mean to reduce both time and cost during a product development project course as well as to guarantee educational quality. The paper also discusses the reason for using demonstrators in an industrial environment. When large product development project courses are given at educational engineering programs, they often strive for imitating a real industrial situation, trying to include all the phases and aspects of product realization. Time is of course critical in both environments, industrial and academic, but for slightly different reasons. A typical industrial project may run over several years while a large educational project’s duration is counted in months. Thus, if the course tutor wants to simulate the whole product development process, within the same project course, there are needs for means that may speed up the project without spoiling the educational message as well as the industrial authenticity.