The Kingston University electric race team at Silverstone
Last summer we popped over to Kingston University’s Roehampton campus and had a nose around its automotive engineering department with a view to looking at its new Formula Student project.
Its aim was to crack the electric race car category, one gaining much more attention as automotive engineers look to the future of motorsports like FormulaE.
Safe to say we were happy to hear that the team had achieved its goal, being the top ranking UK electric team at Formula Student 2014.
The campus is an impressive site for the students to get to grips with automotive race engineering know-how, with its own wind tunnel, composites labs, and sharing large workshop areas with the aeronautics students.
Kingston already has a bit of previous with electric motorcycles, although this was an entirely separate project.
Although it already had a previous year’s car to tinker with, the team set out with fresh ideas, and began the build in March.
The tubular chassis was redesigned; two Ashwoods electric motors mechanically coupled to a chain drive and limited slip diff provided the power, while the car’s intake and exhaust housings were 3D printed by the nice people at LaserLines.
The preparation for next year is already underway; entered by over 140 university teams from 34 countries across the globe, next year’s aim is to get higher up the overall rankings.
If you or your company are interested in supporting the team, then feel free to get in touch with the team manager {encode=”k1262265@kingston.ac.uk” title=”here”}.
