When the pandemic forced Formula SAE (FSAE) to move its colle­giate design competition entirely online in early 2020, Julia Buckley, then a sophomore, saw the hiatus from racing as an opportunity for Cooper Union Motorsports to take on a big challenge. “I was the engine lead at the time and was thinking about what projects the team could move forward with,” she says. “Electric vehicles are where the industry is moving, and it’s something I was really interested in.”

In a typical year, FSAE hosts a series of competitions that challenge teams of students to conceive, design, fabricate, and fine-tune a Formula-style vehicle with the goal of racing at the Michigan International Speedway. The Cooper team has historically competed in the internal combustion class, but with the extra time afforded by the pandemic’s disruptions, they set their sights on the electric vehicle (EV) portion of the competition, embarking on an ambitious research design process.

“This year was obviously a push year for us. Everything was new,” says Julia, who served as the 2021–2022 Cooper Union Motorsports president and came to Cooper to study mechanical engineering, largely out of an interest in automotive design. With support from technical staff, faculty advisors, and alumni mentors, Julia and her teammates worked countless hours producing cost reports and 3D drawings, testing components, and constructing an all-new battery system and electric powertrain. Their hope is that by next spring, the team will have a thoroughly tested vehicle that is ready to race in Michigan.

According to Aidan Bowman, a rising senior in mechanical engineering and the team’s chief engineer, the focus this year was on learning the fundamentals. “We’ve set up a strong framework for next year’s leadership to dive in and be able to test the vehicle and collect data,” she says.

One significant challenge involved accounting for changes in the vehicle’s dynamics due to its “big power,” as Julia describes it. “The shape of the car hasn’t changed much, but we’ve had to do a lot of redesign when it came to our structural components to make sure they’re strong enough to withstand the acceleration and deceleration values. Our motor is twice as strong as our engine used to be.”

The complexity of the electrical systems posed a steep learning curve. “The sheer amount of electrical design we’ve learned is amazing,” says Aidan. Mechanical engineering students tend to outnumber those from other disciplines in Motorsports, but the team leaders say this was uncharted territory even for electrical engineering majors, who don’t generally focus as much on high voltage systems in their courses.

Adiv Ish-Shalom, who joined Motorsports last fall as a first-year BSE student, had prior experience building electric bicycles. “It’s very different from working out of my basement,” he says. Over several months, he collaborated with two other first-year students on designing a core component of the vehicle from scratch: a 357-volt battery pack with fused cylindrical cells, the same size used by the Tesla Model 3.

Finding support for the EV project was just as essential. Sponsorships from Con Edison and Constellation provided more than $50,000 in funding, in addition to generous support from other donors. The team found mentorship as well, meeting with battery experts at Con Edison and learning from Cooper alumni in design reviews.

On the whole, refocusing Motorsports on the design problems surrounding EVs has been time well spent. According to Julia, “It’s where the industry is moving and the future is moving.” Julia delivered the Class of 2022 Student Address at Commencement this past spring and recently landed her dream job working for cutting-edge sportscar manufac­turer Koenigsegg in Sweden.

“We’re setting up the students who are interested in automotive engineering to tran­sition much better to the industry,” Aidan says. “Major automotive companies are going electric. Startups are going electric. There are so many opportunities.” Julia adds: “So many industries are switching to renewables and electric, and there’s so much work to be done, especially in the next few years.”