Tuesday, March 26, 2024

MIT students revealed their 2019 electric race car in an event

The MIT Motorsports team unveiled their 2019 electric race car in an event. The event was attended by more than 100 members of the MIT community — friends, family, faculty, staff, students, and sponsors.

For more than a decade, the students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been making great efforts to create the ultimate electric race car. The students, come together under the banner of a team called MIT Motorsports have been competing in the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Formula SAE Electric competition in Lincoln, Nebraska. And they also have been awarded various degrees of success ever since.

The MIT Motorsports team is all smiles with their Second Place Overall Spirit of Excellence Award silver trophy at the Formula SAE Electric competition in Lincoln, Nebraska. Photo courtesy of MIT Motorsports
The MIT Motorsports team is all smiles with their Second Place Overall Spirit of Excellence Award silver trophy at the Formula SAE Electric competition in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Photo courtesy of MIT Motorsports

Every year, the team brings improvement to the machine it creates. And they exactly did the same in 2019 also. As mentioned above, this year, the team presented their latest iteration of the electric racer at an event on the MIT grounds.

Mechanical lead, driver, and junior Jeremy Noel outlined the newly converted-to four-wheel-drive vehicle during the event.

The previous version of the car was equipped with a single electric motor that rotated the rear wheels. While the 2019 model has two additional motors to drive the two front wheels in addition to a single rear motor driving both rear wheels.

The electric car weighs around 551 pounds. It comes with a new water-cooled battery instead of the air-cooled one that used in the past. A couple of extra motors give it more power and speed.

As per the MIT News, “This student hands-on project is really the ‘mens et manus,’ the hands-on portion, of our education,” said the team captain and MIT junior Serena Grown-Haeberli.

The team has also developed control systems for the vehicle including power limiting, launch control, and torque vectoring.

This MIT electric car was developed by students using only their wits and the support of a number of sponsors.