The other competitors may have had a few years on them, but what our local teen boys lacked in age they made up for with tenacity.
Waimea College year-9 students Michael Dewe and Finn Eger were joined by Garin’s Brennan Drach at EVolocity’s 2018 grand final in Christchurch on November 24 at the Air Force Museum.
The grand final is the culmination of a year’s work which sees the secondary students design, build and compete in electric vehicles.
“It’s such a fun thing and gives us something to do,” says Michael.
The school teams build a vehicle, either a bike or with 3+ wheels, powered by a standard 350W electric motor, controller and two 12V gel cells. Innovation is encouraged as students strive to make their vehicle the fastest with the least drag, and able to cope with the demands of a tight street circuit. The innovation categories encourage teams to build in object detection and mitigation features along with the measurement and display of key performance metrics.
Finn was charged with writing most of the software and says it provided a great opportunity to learn more about electronics. Their bike impressively included sonic sensors for collision detection and had the standout feature of automatic gear changing.
“I’ve really enjoyed the entire project,” says Finn.
Category winners from schools all over New Zealand arrived in Christchurch to compete in drag racing, street circuit, economy runs challenges, as well as design and innovation, to determine the overall EVolocity winner for 2018.
With eight categories vied for, the three local teens won two categories for innovation, and engineering and economy.
“It was pretty good considering it was our first year and we weren’t really intending to win, we were just there to see what it was all about. It was a real bonus to win two categories,” says Finn.