RS leads Innovation with University of Strathclyde Motorsport (USM)

Here at the University of Strathclyde Motorsport, we have proudly been sponsored by RS for over 7 years. This has helped us develop the electrical capabilities of our previous CV cars and has held great importance in maintaining the team’s competitiveness over the years.

USM is a Formula Student team based in Glasgow operating out of Strathclyde University, where we have been competing for 21 years with an internal combustion car. We at USM are very excited and proud to be working on our first electric vehicle. This is a big leap in terms of design, sourcing, and manufacture.

As we make the big move to developing a fully electric vehicle the support of RS has been more important than ever. As mentioned in the video, there are many new electrical components involved in the inner workings of our first electric vehicle.

To meet all the safety standards required for an electric vehicle we are manufacturing 25 PCBs, which is 6 times more than we had on our combustion vehicles. These boards have become more complex than those previous, and because of that we are now predominantly using surface mount components in our boards. This helps to reduce their size, cost, and time to manufacture. We have been manufacturing and testing these inside and outside of our university lab due to social distancing restrictions.

For our first-year electric vehicle, we have placed a heavy focus on data acquisition and analysis. Therefore, we are implementing never run sensors such as Shock Potentiometers and Brake Temperature Sensors to help us validate our designs.

This has been a very costly and exciting journey for us here at USM, one which we would not have managed without the generosity of our great sponsors. We are excited to get our first electric vehicle running and out for testing soon.