Penn Electric Racing unveiled its new, fully electric race car at College Green on March 31, which will be ready to compete in the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers competition in June 2023.
Penn Electric Racing is Penn’s student-run Formula SAE Electric Team, composed of 70 Penn undergraduates. These students work in three different sub-teams – mechanical, electrical, and operations – to build a fully electric race car at the end of each academic year. Since the team began competing nine years ago, they have built eight cars and won 39 trophies.
“It’s super cool that we’re actually able to build a car. I think that unlike other clubs at Penn, Penn Electric Racing is creating a real-world product,” Engineering junior and Penn Electric Racing operations lead Eddy Yang said.
On average, students on the team work 15 to 20 hours a week, according to Yang. They spend the fall semester designing the car and the spring semester assembling it.
“Since our previous years’ designs were hindered by COVID-19, we had to do a big knowledge shift from the previous generation of Penn Electric Racing. Building the knowledge from the ground up was a big challenge,” Anthony Kim, a Wharton and Engineering sophomore who worked on assembling the car, said. “This year, we were able to adapt and work on perfecting the design choices in person.”
“The last few months have been very busy,” Engineering junior and Mechanical Co-Lead of the team Anton Ludwig said. “The event on College Green is a chance for us to show the Penn community what we’ve been doing.”
Ludwig looks forward to the competition in June. Last year, the team placed 9th out of about 70 teams in the competition. This year, they plan to do even better, Ludwig said.
“Every year, we try to improve the car. In my opinion, it’s super impressive that a group of students is completely building a new car from scratch. It’s a big accomplishment, and I’m proud to show it off to the entire school,” Yang said.
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