Dear Readers,  

Hope you and your families are safe during these trying times! We certainly hope that this situation ends soon and that we do not have any more uncertain times ahead of us.  

We would like to welcome you to another enticing issue of the IEEE TEC Newsletter. In this issue, we take the opportunity to share with you, why we think joining a student competition team is a prodigious step towards a successful career in transportation electrification and e-mobility. This issue specifically covers articles from teams from across the globe and their success stories through their respective Formula Student competitions.  

The COVID pandemic is one of the largest challenges society has faced in modern history. It has deeply affected people, organizations, and institutions. These times call for drastic restructuring of our actions and thriving environments in order for us to realize our goals. To channel through, we rely on the persisting human spirit to adapt and conquer. The world has taken significant strides in face of adversity to restore normalcy. We, at IITB Racing, feel honored to share our endeavors towards the same.

Solar cars. Yes, vehicles powered by the sun. It’s not science fiction. For the solar car teams that participate in the American Solar Challenge, it is nominally a 2-year project that often runs similar to a small business, complete with the engineering and business components to go from concept to reality. The American Solar Challenge is a collegiate student design competition to design, build, and drive a solar-powered vehicle along a pre-defined route and is the road trip many of these teams look forward to in order to showcase the capabilities of their solar-powered vehicle.

The Illini Air Shuttle is a student RSO at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focused on the design and development of a vectored-thrust tandem-wing electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) for commercial transport. The current concept details a zero-emission aircraft that can travel a distance of up to 200 miles and will carry 10 passengers. The Air Shuttle concept was initially designed for rapid transport between large metropolitan areas such as Chicago and surrounding cities and towns like Urbana or Champaign. We expect the Air Shuttle to address limitations of existing methods of public transportation such as unreliable railroad systems and slow buses/shuttles.

While teams, volunteers, and judges alike expected that Formula Hybrid + Electric would be back on track in 2021, it just wasn’t possible.  In many cases, students were unable to access their lab spaces where they were to build their cars.  Even if they could get to their labs, restrictions on the number of students allowed made meaningful work all but impossible.  FH+E 2021 would be virtual with a chance of the 2022 competition being on track.


About the Newsletter

Editors-in-Chief

Jin-Woo Ahn
Co-Editor-in-Chief

 

Sheldon Williamson
Co-Editor-in-Chief

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