Indian builds remote controlled Hyundai Santro electric car inspired by Mr. Bean’s green Mini Cooper

Mr. Bean is one of the iconic character on television played by English actor, comedian Rowan Atkinson. The green coloured Mini Cooper that Mr. Bean used in the series was also quite popular. Everyone might remember the scene where Mr. Bean drove his Mini Cooper while sitting on the roof of the car after he finished shopping for christmas. Now we have an Indian who took inspiration from the scene and decided to recreate the scene using his old Hyundai Santro hatchback.

Mihir Vardhan who hails from Gurugram is the guy behind this idea. The older generation Hyundai Santro used for this project is also special. Mihir had converted this petrol hatchback into an electric car. He managed to convert the car into an electric in just 3 days. Once he was satisfied with the working of the Santro EV, he decided to take things to next level by making it into a remote control car. Unlike Mr. Bean, Mihir does not have to manually control the car while sitting on the roof. Mihir had to make many changes to the car to make it a remote control car.

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Mihir had an idea on how make his Hyundai Santro into a full-size RC car but execution was not easy. He did some modifications to the car to steering to make it work using a remote control. He initially mounted a sprocket on the steering wheel and connected it with a small electric motor using a chain. The idea was looking good however the chain was not staying at place while he tried to make a turn. In his second attempt, he removed the steering wheel and the teeth of the steering column was connected by a U-joint which were then connected to an electric motor.

The electric motor was mounted on a fabricated metal mount. The brakes on this electric Santro were already using an electric brake booster vaccum pump and he used couple of wiper motors from e-rickshaws and made arms for them to use the brakes. The throttle input on this car is controlled digitally. All these systems are connected to an Arduino Uno microcontroller in the car. The commands are given to the car using a 10 channel RC receiver. The receiver controls the brakes and steers the car left and right depending on the position of the joystick on the transmitter. It is definitely a very unique creation and we appreciate the efforts that Mihir put into this creation.

We feel, he took inspiration from Mr. Bean and recreated the scene. However this time he made it only better as he did not drive the car into the back of a cargo truck. The electric Santro used for this experiment currently uses a very small battery and low power electric motor. It currently has a top-speed of 60 kmph and an driving range of 80-90 kms which is sufficient for the city use. The overall cost of this conversion is around Rs 2.4 lakh and the running cost of this Santro EV is Rs 1 per km.

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