22 Feb Moving Closer to Building our Next Car

Aerobody, Batteries and BMS

Although it’s been very rainy here at the farm, the weather hasn’t put a damper on the progress our team is making. Since our last update, we’ve finalized the final shape of the car we will race in the 2017 World Solar Challenge and will begin construction in the upcoming months!

To prepare for this exciting time as well as all of the work required with the in-house carbon fiber layups and chassis construction, we’ve been holding design reviews with our extremely helpful and knowledgeable alumni engineers.

On the electrical front, our Battery and Electrical Teams have both been hard at work. Michael Chen has been working on the mechanical design of the battery pack – making sure the packaging is robust and well secured. He has also been characterizing the performance of several battery technologies as we
move closer to working on building full packs for the next car.

We’ve also been able to finish designing prototypes of our BMS (Battery Management System) and Vehicle computers. Our BMS lead, Greg Lopes is pictured below working out some of the kinks on one of our prototype BMS’ that was made by Sierra Circuits.

Additionally, we have some exciting new Sponsor additions that we will be posting about shortly. Stay tuned for more updates soon – the next one might just reveal the name of our next car!

Receiving Tools from ACDelco and getting ready for a Design Review

Battery tests, 3D printed holders and 18650 aluminum placeholder cells

Greg taking a closer look at one of the prototype BMS’