The car was 90% finished for nine days in a row. That’s not a joke about student engineering. It’s the calendar. Our Formula Student EV car drove under its own power in the middle of September, and the only thing left on the list was wiring — add an energy meter and some sensors so … Read more
He bought the car because three separate sources told him the battery was at 100%. The dealer said it out loud. The manufacturer’s own service center plugged in a scanner and got 100%. Owner forums were full of people reporting the same figure on the same model. Four months later I sat in his passenger … Read more
In the middle of July I walked into a used car complex in Seoul with eight printed battery reports under my arm. By the time I left I had talked to ten dealers, handed out all eight, and sold exactly zero. I thought I knew why. I’m a third-year engineering student who at that point … Read more
On the first of May I walked out of my university research lab for the last time. The plan I was walking away from was a doctorate — about six more years of it. The plan I was walking toward was nothing at all. I had no idea what I wanted to build. I just … Read more
I walked out of my university research lab on May 1st with no idea what I was going to build. Eleven weeks later I was sitting in a rented Kia Niro EV with about 127,000 miles on it, plugged into the OBD port, looking at two numbers that didn’t agree. Up to that point, essentially … Read more
A few weeks ago a sensor lied to me for eight hours straight. The linear potentiometer that will measure suspension travel on our student race car sat perfectly still on my desk — while its output jumped around like a seismograph during an earthquake. Not drifting. Not offset. Just fuzz, edge to edge, all day. … Read more
We lined a steel battery case with electrical tape. It tore, the case became a conductor, and a 14s10p pack died. Here is what to use instead.
Our race car’s battery pack read 58.3 volts fully charged, and the thing telling me that cost about thirty-five dollars. It’s a TASI TA801A — red rubber holster, two AAA batteries, bought with team money at the start of the season. It spent a year in a workshop, a paddock and a pit lane. It … Read more
Seven laps into the endurance semifinal, our car was half a corner from taking the lead. Then the dash went dark and it rolled to a stop. The part that killed it was a relay the size of a matchbox. If you want the fastest possible summary of relay failure symptoms: everything upstream was healthy, … Read more
At 4:30 p.m. on the second day of the competition, everyone else went to the hotel for dinner. I stayed in the paddock with a motor controller I couldn’t keep my hand on. Our two endurance heats were done, our lap times had gotten worse all afternoon, and the water pump that was supposed to … Read more