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Electric Racer Gets Green Flag At NSCC





Members of the Northwest State Community College EV (electric vehicle) Motorsports Club look over the installation of the roll cage on their racer. The modified racing kart chassis will be powered by electricity. Members are, clockwise from left: Dan Strong, John Wright, Andrew Drews, Scott Bennett, Jesse Santos (hidden), Heather Smith, Chris Salgado, and Scott Good. In the driver seat is Eric Heller.– photo by David Pugh

Members of the Northwest State Community College EV (electric vehicle) Motorsports Club look over the installation of the roll cage on their racer. The modified racing kart chassis will be powered by electricity. Members are, clockwise from left: Dan Strong, John Wright, Andrew Drews, Scott Bennett, Jesse Santos (hidden), Heather Smith, Chris Salgado, and Scott Good. In the driver seat is Eric Heller.– photo by David Pugh

In one of the labs at Northwest State Community College, a racing vehicle is taking shape.

Students, members of the NSCC EV Motorsports Club, are spending hours building it under the direction of Aaron Bloomfield, an NSCC engineering technology instructor.

The racer will have all the accoutrements of high speed; wide, low profile racing tires, a roll cage to protect the driver in case of a mishap, lightweight parts, etc.

But this racer has no gas tank.

That’s because the NSCC racer will run on electricity.

evGrandPrix

Purdue University is hosting the Purdue Collegiate evGrandPrix, a race for electric vehicles, Saturday, May 7, at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis,

Ind. About 50 teams are expected.

Based on racing go-karts, Bloomfield and his students are tackling the challenges of turning a standard kart into an electric-power race machine.

“For electric, you remove the engine, obviously, and you add an electric drive. There’s various types you can use,” Bloomfield said.

For the first kart, Bloomfi eld and his students will use a permanent-magnet DC (direct current) motor. Other choices include more powerful, and technically complex, AC motors.

While the power source may have changed, the driver’s controls haven’t. There will still be pedals for acceleration and braking.

“There’s no new learning curve” for the driver, Bloomfi eld said.

“The principal difference with the electric drive is as the battery runs down, performance falls off. Gasoline engines are consistent from start to finish. With an electric kart, lap times, even if the driver is consistent, will slow.”

That means the NSCC team needs to design a system that will allow quick pit stops and quick battery changes.

The batteries are a challenge. They’ll add 100 pounds to the chassis.

Benefits

The project is more than throwing parts together to create something that moves under its own power.

The project is already generating real-world teaching opportunities for the participants.

“The CAD designer of the group (Isaac Martin) is not here today, because he has a job,” Bloomfield said.

“He was doing a lot of design work for our axle assembly and mechanicals, so he drew up a good part of the chassis and a lot of the detailed drawings. I encouraged him to use them as part of his portfolio.

“He actually went on an interview, and he took all his EV Motorsports material. That was his primary demonstration of what he’s been doing.

“So he’s got a job now. I don’t know how much of that is from EV Motorsports, but a good deal of it is.”

Students are getting a lot of other real world experience.

“We had two students working on this project as a team. Most team projects, they’re not very real world. More like, ‘here’s 20 minutes, work together.’

"In the real world, everyone’s busy, so they need to find their own times togeth- er,” Bloomfield said.

“We’re dealing with real timelines and deadlines. We’re dealing with real-world development challenges, so this is advantageous for a lot of reasons. It’s exciting. It’s fun. It’s different.”

Funding

The club has a budget of about $10,000 for its racing program. So far, money has come in from private donations.

“Anytime we do anything innovative, it typically costs a lot of money,” Bloomfield said.

“We’ve gotten several thousand dollars in donations so far. I think the college is going to provide some assistance with travel to the events, and we still have our feelers out.”

Students in the club have even created their own marketing materials that can be delivered to prospective sponsors.

Long-term, the EV Motorsports project could turn into a class in electric vehicle technology; perhaps, even a program.

“It is kind of fun to drive and work on vehicles that go fast. That’s a draw, and the whole racing at Indianapolis on the big stage, so to speak, is enticing.

“This is a passion of mine,” Bloomfield said.

“I’m real proud of the students who have stepped up to show their support.”


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