THEY might lack the roar of a gasoline engine – but a student racing team is still making noise with its first electric car.
The University of Glasgow UGRacing team is going green by replacing a gasoline engine with a more durable battery in their self-built vehicle.
About 140 students are involved in the design, construction and driving of the fully electric racing car, which will be put to the test on the famous Silverstone circuit.
Fraser Cowie, UGRacing Team Director, said: “After a brilliant result in Formula Student competition earlier this summer, we have great confidence in the design of our car and are delighted to get down to business. to manufacture our first electric vehicle. .
“With COP26 on the horizon, now is the perfect time to focus on moving away from fossil fuels and our contribution to making racing more environmentally friendly.
“It’s a big commitment, and we’ll need to learn all kinds of new skills, but it’s an exciting challenge with real benefits for those of us who work as a team.
“Many former UGRacing members have made careers in the racing and renewable energy industry, so this is a great opportunity for us to develop hands-on experience with the kind of technology that will help us achieve a clean future. zero. ”
The members of UGRacing, established in 2008, come from the four colleges of the university and in the last Formula Student competition earlier this summer, the UGRacing team’s electric vehicle placed third out of 65 entrants in the Design section. Presentation of the competition.
Formula Student is an engineering competition open to those studying at universities in the UK.
Established in 1998, it challenges teams to build and ride high performance single-seaters against each other, with races held at Silverstone each summer.
The team is now starting to work on installing a custom battery on the vehicle, with guidance and safety advice from staff at the university’s James Watt School of Engineering and sponsor Arnold Clark Motors.
The team’s work is part of a campus-wide goal on sustainability at the University of Glasgow and their current generation car will be on display in the university cloisters as part of the series university climate-focused events at the COP26 conference.
Gurleen Khaira, Head of Marketing and Media at UGRacing, added: “The UGRacing team is made up of students from the University of Glasgow with all kinds of different skills, not just science and engineering.
“There are all kinds of opportunities to get involved in corporate presentations, graphic design, communications and contribute to a really exciting project.
“As part of this, we are actively looking to find more business partners who can help us build the best car possible by next year’s competition.
“We hope that we can build on the support we already have from sponsors and properly realize our ambitions of building a truly capable electric racing car.”
Dr. John Shackleton, senior lecturer in engineering design at the university’s James Watt School of Engineering, is the team’s academic advisor.
John said: “The development of an electric vehicle continues to challenge the team in many new ways, but it’s encouraging to see how committed they are to the work.
“Engineers are going to play a key role in finding new ways to tackle climate change over the next few decades, so it’s great to see this generation of students take it upon themselves to learn vital new skills.”
For more information on UGRacing, see https://ugracing.co.uk
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