Formula SAE is a student design competition for universities to design, build, and race formula-style cars. As one of the founding universities, UT Austin has expanded its team to include solar-powered and electric vehicles (EV), alongside its traditional internal combustion car. In recent years in the EV division, there has been a shift away from a single inboard-mounted motor to multiple outboard, wheel hub-mounted setups. Outboard motors widen the performance envelope of the car to include traction control, torque vectoring, and energy regeneration.

In the past years, UT’s EV team utilized a single inboard motor driving the rear wheels of the car. To implement a wheel hub-mounted setup, each wheel hub motor would require an inverter to operate. However, the size and weight of commercial inverters for each motor would drastically increase the weight of the car and its complexity almost exponentially. Thus, to bridge the performance gap to the top scorers, the EV team has elected to design their motor controller to minimize the gravimetric and volumetric losses while maximizing the performance envelope.

Team Members:

Abhijeet Bendapudi
Rylan Hanks
Derek Lu
Elijah Pustilnik
Jacob Pustilnik
Kaitlyn Sloan