Purdue Electric Vehicle Club

The spring '25 semester is off to a great start, and as always our teams have so much engineering happening! On the karting and battery side EVC is preparing for the rapidly approaching evGrandPrix 14 on April 19th. Several mechanical and electrical changes are occurring on the karts with new brakes, electrical wiring, motor and motor controller configurations, and seat fittings! We are incredibly excited as well to announce our driver and crew chiefs for the race: #61: Driver: Grant Cameron, Crew Chief: Philip Goldberg #66: Driver: Hana Omara, Crew Chief: Corey Hurda #23: Driver: Cristian Grover, Crew Chief: Nathan Pope There are high expectations for what is to come this year with a great group of people! Battery team has begun the assembly process of newly constructed batteries for this year. Along with mechanical changes, the software side has been busy making revisions to the BMS. Hovercraft team has now started the manufacturing process. A frame for the machine has been built, and iterations continue to be made on propeller designs. EVC is excited for what is to come as this project continues to progress! The Technical Tinkering team has already completed several small projects. The semester began with a speed prototyping activity to get members thinking about the design process and how to go through basic engineering processes. Afterwards, members got to learn programming and soldering skills through a Chips and Charms project making electrical jewelry. They are now moving on to the creation of RC cars! Two old projects are also returning this semester, the motorcycle and autonomous go-kart projects! The motorcycle team is going through a lot of inventory of what has been done previously and is determining paths to move forward. A lot of disassembly has been completed to see where to improve past designs. The autonomous project in partnership with Latin Autonomous Projects Club (LAPS) continues to go through several software changes for tracking and mapping of the pavement and grass of the Purdue Grand Prix track. There is so much more to come from us this spring, and this is just the beginning!

We are so excited to be working with Latin Autonomous Projects Club (LAPS) on a joint autonomous kart project!

Another successful semester has come to an end for EVC, which means more team updates! The karting team has been focused on two major projects through the second half of the semester. First, testing is being conducted with our Sevcon motor controller to improve compatibility performance between the motor and motor controller. This testing will enable a smoother motor performance as well as better power limiting capabilities. Another project that is in the research phase is a new dyno project! Investigation has begun into the components that will be necessary for an electrical dyno. On the battery side Rev 1.0 of a new BMS has been designed with testing to be run in the next semester. The software side of the BMS encountered several updates to improve quality and reliability. Hardware for high voltage batteries continues to be designed in order to be ready for the karts next semester. Hovercraft has continued the design phase of the vehicle with research into the design of a propeller, frame, and rudders. EVC is very appreciative of HobbyKing for their support in providing batteries to be used for the hovercraft! Manufacturing of the machine will begin heading into next semester. Technical tinkering is finishing up their first major project of RC planes. Most of the building has been completed and we are very excited to have the chance to fly them next semester! New projects will begin soon with the wrapping up of the planes. On the fun side (the engineering is still fun, but this is different) EVC had our annual pumpkin carving event for Halloween where creativity of members got to shine. A lot of great designs were made and of course the EVC pumpkin needed to be included. This semester also saw the return of the one day build! Fun was had building an electric powered RC drivable couch. While it may have been snowing it did not stop members from taking a seat and strolling around. We are looking forward to what is to come next semester and there will be more updates in the coming months about evGrandPrix race 14!

It's time for a mid semester update to show off what EVC has been working on for the past 8 weeks! The semester began with two callouts for a total of over 140 attendees to give an introduction for what the club has to offer. It is always exciting to discuss with potential new members about what EVC does and our projects. Speaking of projects, the teams have had a lot going on. On the karting side EVC had the opportunity to participate in the first fall race for electric go-karts at Whiteland Raceway Park. New members got the chance to experience a race day and driver Hana Omara completed all the laps, coming home with a 2nd place finish. Our low voltage karts have had a lot of track time with the Whiteland race as well as testing time on the Purdue Grand Prix track as preparations begin for evGrandPrix 14 in the spring! The battery team has been hard at work to build upon the new high voltage packs that were created last year. Electronically there has been a lot of testing done on battery health of low voltage cells as well as BMS integration for our high voltage packs. Mechanically the battery team is creating a new case design for quality improvements for high voltage batteries. Now onto the new teams! The hovercraft team started off the year with a bang creating a simplified machine using a leaf blower. Planning continues on the selection of components for the full scale electric mechanism as well as designing the mechanical and electrical part orientations. Technical tinkering has also started off with numerous workshops and projects. An introductory CAD project using Fusion 360 began the year with the creation of desk organizers. These were 3D printed to have a physical item to take home. Members also were able to use the Bechtel Innovation Design Center to learn MIG welding techniques. Currently, an ongoing project is being completed on electric RC planes. A lot has been going on inside meetings, but outside of meetings we stay busy with other events. This semester we had a three part Altium workshop to create PCB nametags. Of course there are other fun events such as game night and Mario Kart night to relax from the busy semester. We can not wait to see how projects progress through the rest of this semester!

Meet the 2024-2025 EVC Leadership Team!! This outstanding group of Purdue Students is excited to work together and lead our members and various EV projects to do great things this year. Max Bartkowiak: President Shae Stonemeier: Treasurer Rachel White: Vice President Jack Thornton: Chief Engineer, Battery Team Lead, Hovercraft Team Lead Jack Gronceski: Chief Engineer, Kart Team Lead Nathan Pope: Safety Officer, Kart Team Lead Philip Goldberg: Kart Team Lead Caden Schroeder: Technical Tinkering Team Lead Aidan Hegarty: Technical Tinkering Team Lead We look forward to great things the team can accomplish this year!

Photos from EVC's end-of-year celebration at the Purdue Grand Prix Track! We wrapped up the year by driving the our karts along with MEP Racing and Titan Club Racing. The motorcycle team also conducted their first full-scale test of the bike under its own power with great preliminary success. Great work this year, y'all! Huge thank-you to Ally Frank for the photography at the event!

Social media has been neglected a bit due to finals and the end of the semester, but better late than never! The 2024 evGrand Prix was a great day for EVC, with karts?#88?and?#23?placing first place in the design category and kart?#16?placing first place in efficiency and second place overall in the championship! Unfortunately, an error in motor controller operation led to Jacob Peddycord in Kart?#88?and Shae Stonemeier in Kart?#23?being disqualified for going over the power limit set by the rules. Kart?#88?was first place in the race before the penalty. The team is aware of the error and already working hard to find the cause and prevent it from happening in the future. Despite the setback in placement, EVC is extremely grateful for the hard work put in by the members, drivers, and leadership team this year to assemble the largest and most technically-accomplished roster of karts in club history. We would also like to extend a big congratulations to?Purdue Polytechnic Anderson Racing?for their first place win in the championship! A special thank-you to the following: 2023-2024 Leadership President:?Matthew Kane Treasurer:?Maxwell Bartkowiak Kart?#88:?Jack Gronceski, Rudis Sprenne Kart?#23:?Rachel White Kart?#16:?Shae Stonemeier, Maxwell Bartkowiak Kart?#66:?Kyle Faulk HV Battery/BMS:?Matthew Kane 2023-2024 Drivers Kart?#88:?Jacob Peddycord Kart?#23:?Shae Stonemeier Kart?#16:?Andrew Russell Kart?#66:?Hana Omara Additional thank-you as well to Jared Pike and Ally Frank for the wonderful photography!

MEET THE BATTERIES! (Part 3) The final installment of this year's battery reveal is the crowning achievement of Electric Vehicle Club for the 2023-2024 year. Our high voltage battery program was a brand new endeavor for our organization and pushed our design, manufacturing, and engineering abilities to their absolute limits to create fully-custom high-performance racing batteries from scratch in just seven months. The final specs on these packs are 100.8V fully-charged, 45Ah capacity, 4kWh energy, and 40kW maximum continuous discharge. The batteries weigh 52 pounds and include an integrated custom battery management system. The processes included in their manufacture include CNC milling, CNC routing, laser cutting, 3D printing, spot welding, TIG welding, SMT PCB assembly, nickel electroplating, and an uncountable amount of cutting/drilling/filing operations. A huge thank-you to everyone who made this project possible this year including the EVC battery team, Bechtel Innovation Design Center, Purdue ECE Shop, and Glassboard Product Development. The 2023-2024 battery team was led by Matthew Kane and the batteries were raced on karts?#88?and?#23?by Jacob Peddycord and Shae Stonemeier. Kart 23 was led by Rachel White and kart 88 by Rudis Sprenne and Jack Gronceski. If you want to know more about the project or have any questions, ask in the comments below!

Meet the batteries part 2! The second battery being featured is the new half-Steven-Pack named "Steve." Steve was specifically designed to be smaller and lighter than a typical evGrand Prix battery pack in order to be as efficient as possible for the efficiency kart program this year. The battery is just 2.1kWh and weights only 36 pounds! Steve was designed by Nathan Pope and raced on kart 16 driven by Andrew Russell. The team leads the project are Shae Stonemeier and Maxwell Bartkowiak.

Meet the batteries! This week we will be featuring the various batteries EVC designed this year for the evGrand Prix. First up are the classic "Steven Packs" that have been run by EVC for the past several years. This year their cells were all tested and reordered based on capacity and resistance, wires were redone, and cases were renovated. The battery was raced on kart?#66?which was led by?Kyle Faulk?and driven by?Hana Omara.