EVC Projects
2023-2024
The Electric Vehicle Club is a student-run organization that focuses on giving all members hands-on engineering experience through EV-related projects. Members get to contribute to one or multiple of a variety of different project options and get the opportunity to test out their designs. Our flagship event each year is the EV Grand Prix, which takes place at the Purdue Grand Prix Track in early to mid-April. While electric go-karts are one of the main focuses and draws to the club, EVC also works on several other EV projects!
Something that makes our club unique is our multi-project organization which allows us to cater to many different student interests! We are excited to announce this upcoming year’s project lineup including an electric motorcycle conversion, three electric go-karts, a custom EV build, and Lithium battery redesign! More information about each project is described below.
Motorcycle Team
The motorcycle team is returning this year with exciting goals and a lot of work to be done! This team is working towards a full-electric conversion of a Honda CBR 150cc motorcycle and adding in cool new features along the way. The current system includes a 38kW water-cooled ME1302 PMAC motor driven by an extremely powerful Sevcon Gen4 motor controller powered by a large bank of Lithium-ion batteries. When activity resumes in the fall, the team will be focusing on electrical integration, battery assembly, and first-round systems testing. If you are interested in motorcycles, mechanical design, electrical design, battery design, UI software, high power electronics, or vehicle systems design, this is the project for you!
Electric Go-Kart Teams
This year we are excited to announce the introduction of an entirely new go-kart team! The goal for this team is to design a heavily optimized racing machine that gets the best performance possible while maintaining efficiency. This team will focus on taking our current go-kart designs and improving their weight, electrical and mechanical losses, motor tuning profiles, battery architecture, and much more! If you are interested in working with computer simulation tools to model systems, data collection and analysis, system engineering and optimization, high power electronics, and, of course, making something go very, very fast, then this is the team for you!
In addition to the new go kart, EVC will continue servicing and improving our classic set of karts that we have run with great success for the past several years. These karts use powerful and reliable, but simpler AC induction drivetrains powered by robust Curtis 1234 motor controllers. Similar to the systems found in electric golf carts, these components utilized in our racing vehicles are tuned for power and performance. There is always a lot of work to be done on these projects to keep them running smoothly- if you are interested in high power electronics, mechanical design, go-kart tuning, or working on high-performance vehicles, you might want to check out this team!
Remote Control Go-Kart Team
This year we are also introducing a new remote control go-kart project! The team will be taking the chassis and parts from the old autonomous go-kart projects and shifting focus to creating a basic functional RC system that will allow the kart to function without a driver in the seat. If you are interested in computer programming, RC systems, motor controller interfacing, and designing mechanical hardware, be sure to check out this team!
Once the RC go-kart has a prototype up and running, the team plans to use this as a basis for getting the autonomous program started up again. If you were interested in the project in the past don't worry, it's still sticking around, we're just focusing on the kart and its hardware for now!
EV Design Team
Our EV design team is returning for their second year working on their EV project. This project is aimed towards individuals who are interested in designing an entire electric vehicle system from the ground up including the chassis, drivetrain, steering system, and electronics. While the final product will not operate at the same speed as the competitive go karts, members will be exposed to all design elements considered when designing a vehicle system. The team has worked with the Bechtel Innovation Design Center on campus to weld a frame and will be focusing on their electrical and drivetrain systems in the fall semester. If you are interested in electrical and mechanical design, EV systems, and hands-on prototyping and manufacturing then be sure to check this team out!
Battery Design Team
A brand-new team that we will be adding this year is our battery design team. EVC’s current set of race batteries have reached the end of their life cycle and are ready to be replaced with newer lithium technology that is safer, more energy-dense, and more optimized for a racing application. This team is going to do a full design of an electric racing battery pack including cell selection, cell architecture, pack characterization, BMS selection and integration, and enclosure design. There is a lot of work to be done on this team and we are very excited to integrate this work into our club!
