Year 2 is Done!

The University of Victoria EcoCAR2 team has returned from a grueling 12 days of year 2 competition in Yuma, Arizona, and San Diego, California. Over the almost two weeks the team saw a lot of triumphs as well as some downfalls; from the competition we brought a sense of team spirit, a commitment to make sure that Year 3 is the best year yet, and a little bit of hardware to show off!

The first week of competition was hard push to get the car working. When we arrived in Yuma the entire team worked together efficiently to get all of the mechanical work done; it seemed that we always had at least a couple of people working on the back, one or two under the car, and a few at the front. Work progressed extremely quickly and by the fourth day of competition we were ready to start running.  Unfortunately a module failed in the high-voltage battery pack and we were unable to run; however, we put in as much time as we could into other work such as powering some of the accessories and the infotainment system using the 12V battery. We also presented our Vehicle Design Review and Static Consumer Acceptability to panels of judges.

The next week, team UVic travelled to San Diego to present on our Mechanical, Electrical, and Controls systems; and giving Business, Communications, Mathworks Modelling, and Freescale Innovation (Infotainment) presentations.

We ended up receiving awards for first place on the Mechanical, Mathworks, and Freescale presentations; and 7th overall in year two of the competition!

In the next year we have a lot of work to do in Mechanical, Electrical, Controls, Software, Business and Communications. A few of our key members have graduated so there will be lots of opportunities for attending workshops throughout the year; anyone interested should get involved as soon as possible!

We will be having a meeting on Monday, June 24th starting at 5:30pm; anyone wanting to find out more about the team is welcome to come by and talk to the students who have been part of it. If you're interested in joining, please bring a 'resume' with your name, contact info, and a short description of experience you think would be relevant to working with the team.

Contact UVic EcoCAR 2