After Covid disrupted Oxford Brookes Racing from fielding its first electric car entry in the 2021 Formula Student competition, all the focus has been on upgrading the car entirely to race in 2022.
SPAL as the thermal management partner, received this update:
“Since FSUK the new has been mainly working on the OBR21 car. Our current mid-term goal is to get the car running on its own power and complete a shakedown early this year. The car is close to the running state mechanically, although the gearbox still remains our primary issue. Whilst working on the fixes, we are also working on the designing of upgrade packages to improve the reliability and performance.”
“We have been validating our vehicle PCBs at high voltage, by performing Hi-Pot testing (up to 1.2kV), to ensure the functional safety of the devices as well as vigorously testing individual segments of the accumulator to measure the effectiveness of our cooling strategy and lithium cell performance for the endurance aspect of the competition.”
Formula Student has grown in scale and ambition
SPAL MD Matthew Morris reflected that Formula Student has come a long way over the years in terms of scale and ambition. When he was first approached back in 2014 to supply engine cooling fans to a number of competing teams it was a straight-forward design and build challenge for mainly ICE vehicles.
“Fast forward to last year I was on a Zoom call with the OBR Cooling Lead, Aerodynamics having an in-depth discussion about the various parameters and considerations for battery cooling for a whole new technology. We at SPAL are very excited to hear more about the development of ‘the most advanced car in OBR history’.”
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