Formula Student Electric – short drive

"505 - morphine not found" (morphine500) 10/14/2013 at 11:21 • Filed to: MR Monday

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First thing first – I know that there are lot of people with mechanical or engineering education around here, so let's start with pointing out, that a Formula racer built by students is nothing new.

Called Formula SAE in the US and Formula Student in the EU, there should of course be some differences, but as I am not of engineering background, I wouldn't know, I just see that these categories look roughly the same. Let it stand here though that this car races in the Formula Student Electric category in Europe, if you want to know what that entails, google it.

With the disclaimer out of the way, let the relentless harping begin. I only got to drive this beauty for like 5 minutes, while I can easily see myself even owning one as track toy (costs are prohibitive for me sadly), so that fell short of what I would feel satisfying. Still, even tasting it was a huge experience for me, as this is more, much more than a fancy go-kart. The example I drove, made by the good people of Budapest Technical University (BME Formula Racing Team), had a carbon composite monocoque. Not some iron scaffolding and a bit of plastic sheeting, but a freaking monocoque, out of carefully layered carbon fiber. Propulsion comes from two electric motors, if both are wrought at full song, they are good for 400Nm (295 ft lb), so the vessel can theoretically hit 100km/h to the tune of 3secs – and the guys aren't far off that, even though this car is brand new for 2013, so a lot of testing is still due. For the purpose of the sponsors driving event at which I had a go behind the wheel, it was toned back some, but the car could still easily spin, if the go-pedal was not treated with respect. Not least because the slicks had no chance to get to working temperature on the cold pavement we had. Of course, spinning is what other people do, we see it as a way to grab some oppo, which the car could probably pull off, if you had enough time behind the wheel. Here's some footage I got during the day, filming other people, and doing a helmet cam on my run.

The aspect I love about this is that it's a complete Formula racer. Push-rod suspension with double wishbones all around, as light as possible, with as much power as possible, lots of gizmos, telemetry, professional brakes with on-board option to set brake balance, the best possible suspension geometry with no corners cut, I could go on an on. And you are fastened right to the composite chassis, so you don't as much feel what the car does, you simply know it – it's not your butt feeling it, you are connected right at the synapses. No car with a normal body can match this, this feeling is unique to Formula racers, and that I could easily recognize this feeling in this car, even though I only read about it before, testaments how well it works.

I'm no race car driver, so there could be limitations to the car I simply cannot hope to unearth – yeah it's a strange feeling knowing, that i'm probably not good enough to match a student project. However, Lauda said about that Ferrari in Rush, that it's a pig, but I would be completely speechless if I ever got the chance to try it (and would somehow evade fiery death in the process). In the same way, the simple fact, that this is something of a select group is enough to provide lots of smiles for me. Well anyway, enough being humble, I think Michaela, because it's named after some busty Check waitress, handles like a dream, and I want to have sweet electric sex with this thing for a long long time. And that is all, sorry to keep you for so long.

cardriverx > 505 - morphine not found 10/14/2013 at 11:37

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Looks like a well sorted car, when I was in FSAE for the past 5 years I always wanted to drive an electric one. Yeah our CBR600 engine sounded great but I would imagine the immense torque that thing makes in such a light package would be amazingly fun.