BEV Top 10 Project Mistakes
Paying for expedited shipping. We paid thousands of dollars for rush shipping throughout this project. Almost all of it was unnecessary. During the entire run of the project we operated under the delusions we would be done "soon," "very soon," "in a few weeks," "in a couple of weeks," and "in a few more days."
Believing the project could be accomplished in a couple of months. My thought going in was, "We're putting a camper on a truck. How tough can this be?" The project took about one year from concept finalization to completion and included 8.5 months of construction and assembly.
Not being more aggressive managing weight. We knew very, very early that weight would be a challenge. It was.
Not ensuring that every single piece of hardware added to the rig was metric. Now I have to carry two sets of tools and a bunch of heavy spare US dimension hardware.
Working myself too hard. I worked long, long days, seven days a week for months on end. I ran myself up against my physical and psychological rev limiter and spent months bouncing off of the red line. This was very tough on me and took a toll. It will take a while to recuperate and rebuild my reserves.
Not creating a contract for key subcontractors. I did all the subcontracting on this job with handshake deals. As can sometimes happen, that led to some challenges, especially related to defined deliverables and due dates. It meant the project moved from buying a mostly turnkey vehicle to buying a build it yourself vehicle. I did not apply the business and project management practices I spent a lifetime learning while I was in business.
Being forced into false deadlines for procurement. Because I operated under a false sense of impending completion and crushing "get it here" pressure during the procurement phase, as soon as I found a solution, I procured it. There may have been a much superior solution one click or phone call away but I never got there.
Using rubber backed washers as a key component. Most of them rotted away before the rig even rolled out of the shop.
Not hiring a suspension engineer early in the project. I would rather have had a professional vehicle engineer review our design early on than be doing it retroactively.
Not updating component locations to reflect ongoing design changes. Key components, such as the electrical systems compartment, were located based on early design parameters. Their locations were not changed or updated when the fundamental design of the vehicle changed during the early stages of development.