This week has been a week of manufacture. We continued fabricating our battery boxes which have been produced from 0.09” 6061 T6 sheet Aluminum and look, up to now, exactly how we designed them. We now need to weld the sections together and electrically insulate them to complete them. This task required more man hours than we estimated which we learnt from and accounted for this in upcoming manufacturing tasks. However, the task is still on schedule.

We have been bench testing our Arduino in preparation for torque vectoring. The torque vectoring is a very interesting system on our car. Torque vectoring reduces the speed of the inside driven wheel when cornering which helps pull the car round a corner. Successful implementation should increase drivability which translates to reducing lap times on the track. A detail which we are pushing is the ability to have a driver preference setting. This setting would mean that different drivers can request different levels of torque vectoring since some drivers will like having a stronger response when turning into a corner whilst some drivers will prefer a more pure feel when cornering.

After an application in the fall quarter, it was pleasing to be given UROP funds which we will utilize during this quarter. We identified that testing will reveal some imperfections with some systems on our prototype car. However, due to the timing of testing, we will identify these issues in the heart of ‘race season’. Spring is the time when race vehicle parts and equipment is ordered from all around the country, as such we may have to pay a slightly higher price to ensure we get certain parts on time. If this is the case then a healthy back up of budget is necessary to ensure we are not stranded without money.

By Lewis Munshi, Electric Racecar