UVic engineering students gear up for electric car competition
Engineering students at the University of Victoria are developing their first, fully electric racecar that's bound for competition in Michigan this summer.
“It’s almost an identity at this point,” says UVic Formula Motorsport team member Yaël Oosthuizen.
“I spend almost all my free time outside of school as a full-time engineering student building a racecar.”
The club’s chief engineer says the team’s goal this year is to develop a solid design. The group has already spent hours welding together the chassis and is now developing their battery management system for the international competition in June.
“In previous years, it’s kind of filled up slowly. This year it was almost instant just to register for the competition,” says Oosthuizen.
The team thinks that’s reflective of the way the industry is going as the world pushes to put cleaner cars on the road.
“Students of the current generation are very interested in succeeding and contributing to solutions in this space,” says UVic mechanical engineering professor Curran Crawford.
Oosthuizen is among them. The third-year student says he wants to build a career in the electric automotive sector to make a positive impact on the environment.
“Learning how to build an electric car in school really gives you and edge when you’re competing for jobs in industry,” he says.
Crawford says the volunteer club is a natural progression for students to apply the theory they’re learning in the classroom.
“The students on the team here are getting experience designing a battery pack,” says Crawford.
“It’s not just gluing some batteries together. It’s how do you keep them cool and warm enough? How do you do that safely? There’s high voltages, high currents. So if the car crashed, what are the safety systems? Those kinds of things.”
The electric team expects it’ll end up taking a total of 10 months to build the racecar.
It’s being designed to hit a top speed of 200 km/h, and the competition is judged on a mix of design work and racing skill.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
MPP Sarah Jama asked to leave Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment which has been banned at Queen’s Park.
Mountain guide dies after falling into a crevasse in Banff National Park
A man who fell into a crevasse while leading a backcountry ski group deep in the Canadian Rockies has died.
2 teens charged in Halifax homicide: police
Two teenagers have been charged with second-degree murder in connection to an alleged homicide near the Halifax Shopping Centre earlier this week.
'Deep ignorance': Calls for Manitoba trustee to resign sparked after comments about Indigenous people and reconciliation
A rural Manitoba school trustee is facing calls to resign over comments he made about Indigenous people and residential schools earlier this week.
ByteDance prefers TikTok shutdown in U.S. if legal options fail, Reuters sources say
TikTok owner ByteDance would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it if the Chinese company exhausts all legal options to fight legislation to ban the platform from app stores in the U.S., four sources said.
12-year-old hippo in Japan raised as a male discovered to be a female
When Gen-chan arrived at a zoo in Japan in 2017, no one questioned whether the then-five-year-old hippopotamus was a boy. Seven years later, zoo staff made a surprising discovery: Gen-chan, now 12, was female.
Here's why Harvey Weinstein's New York rape conviction was tossed and what happens next
Here's what you need to know about why movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction was thrown out and what happens next.
Improve balance and build core strength with this exercise
When it comes to cardiovascular fitness, you may tend to focus on activities that move you forward, such as walking, running and cycling.
Legendary hockey broadcaster Bob Cole dies at 90: CBC
Bob Cole, a welcome voice for Canadian hockey fans for a half-century, has died at the age of 90. Cole died Wednesday night in St. John's, N.L., surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, told the CBC.