Have you ever thought about building a vehicle from scratch? Imagine having to design the body, customize the vehicle, and brainstorm solutions for any arising problems.
A group of brilliant, young engineers at Texas A&M University-Kingsville recently built a successful vehicle that raced against various universities and colleges from across Texas and won second place.
The South Texas USA Greenpower Electric Car Competition was held on April 6 and 7 at Brownsville International Airport.
For this competition, the team members were required to have created a vehicle that would travel the furthest distance within a 90-minute time interval.
In order for the cars to be eligible to race, the car could only be powered by two 12 volt batteries and one DC electric motor.
All teams were given the same motor and batteries, so the design and weight of the vehicle were the key factors when designing the body.
Through this event the team members formed the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).
Before the team could start constructing their ideal car it had to wait for the kit that contains the parts and tools needed for assembly.
The kit did not arrive until January and the batteries and motor did not arrive until the beginning of March.
To customize their car, the students chose fiberglass as their material, emulated a teardrop body and a dome- shaped nose to reduce turbulence, and their materials were sponsored by Diamond Fiberglass in Victoria, Texas.
“Our biggest challenge whenever we were doing this project was obviously time constraint. We had almost no time to make a really decent design. And the second big challenge we ran into was finishing the fiberglass, mainly the nose,” Joshua Ordonez, leader of the SAE and a mechanical engineering major, said.
The students were the third team in America with an all-fiberglass body, and the first team in Texas to modify the roll cage in order to reduce the weight and increase the efficiency of the vehicle.
Overall, it took approximately three months to build the vehicle, with each participant devoting personal time to the race.
“It took a lot of time, a lot of hard work, and we raced to see it finally drive off. There were all-nighters pulled, and once we finally got in there and starting driving it was awesome,” Noe Martinez, team member and a mechanical engineering major, said.
The electric car competition originally started in England in 1999 and moved to America to promote STEM- related fields and endorse the automotive industry.
Team members include: Martinez, Charles Tandy, Taiwo Oladele, Tanush Chowdhury, Kemute Okuh, Ayodeji Adeniran, Ordonez, Matthew Bast. Karan Moody is the assigned mentor, and Dr. Rajab Challoo, chair of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is the overseeing professor for the SAE and car competitions.
The SAE members hope they will compete in future events and participate in other projects like the Baja SAE event and represent the school with intelligence and vitality.
“We became buddies. I didn’t even know these guys, and now look,” said Tandy, a team member and mechanical engineering major.