Chassis for the Transparent SUV

After reading the Autozine article on car chassis, I can describe the chassis design.

The flat base can be described as the backbone chassis. We need to make this base very strong but we can use hollow tubes all over the base, leaving a little for the battery case. The battery case can contribute to structural strength by fixing it tightly to the base. 

I am thinking of using 1mm thick hollow tubes but at the edges, we need much stronger chassis as crash damage reduction to protect passengers. Also, because the batteries need to be removeable, the edges can only use smaller how tubes, 5 cm width only. We can use thicker aluminium, 5mm even but at places where the Jack's are to be put, we should add steel plates. So the base can be stated as ladder construction, common in SUV except that, the regular flat box design should simplify the ladder structure.

Also, all motors are located outside the backbone chassis, not on it.

The main problem is how to support the Acrylic exoskeleton. 1/10th scale models can support its own body using just 0.5 mm flexible plastic, not even the stronger Acrylic. It was able to support more than 1 kg before the plastic shell bends more than half of its height. Scaling wise, it is equivalent to more than 100 kg, bending wise. Small models are stronger bending wise.

So we need a body frame in order to provide crash and roll protection. Easy to stick sheet metals but they are not strong. We can use monocoque body shell but with much less steel and pieces to weld but still too heavy. 

The ideal is to use prefabricated aluminium hollow bars but can we bend aluminium hollow bars? If we do not solve the production problem with the body frame, we cannot reduce its price to us15, 000. We cannot even produce quickly, despite injection molding the Acrylic body shell.

Another problem is how to stick metal sheets to Acrylic. We can epoxy glue carbon fibre at strategic places but this is costly. Good for racing, but not production.