UWA Motorsport Team

We are the University of Western Australia (UWA) Motorsport Team - the result of 30 passionate students who design, manufacture and race an open wheel electric racecar each year to compete in FSAE-Australasia. Flo, the 2022 car, was our first car to compete in a dynamic event at competition since 2013 (back when we were still working on combustion vehicles). Now, we're ready to race at peak performance again as we work hard to research and develop new ways to get seconds shaved off of our lap times. 

Flo featured a 240Nm axial flux motor from Phi Power that drove the rear wheels through a customized Ford Escort mk4 differential, controlled by a Cascadia Motion PM100dz inverter. We used custom PCBs to manage our 588V battery pack, as well as in our Vehicle Control Unit (VCU), Power Distribution Module (PDM), Tractive System Activation Light (TSAL) and brake light.

VCU

The Vehicle Control Unit (VCU) is the command centre of the car. It turns accelerator pedal inputs into torque requests for the inverter, processes wheel speed differences to perform traction control.

PDM

The Power Distribution Module (PDM) distributes power from our 4s6p Li-ion pouch cell battery to the rest of our LV system. It also has a dedicated high current channel for our pump and PWM channels for the cooling fan.

TSD

The Tractive System Detect board (TSD) controls the precharge and discharge of our inverter and keeps our main pack relays closed when the tractive system is enabled.

TSAL

The Tractive System Activation Light (TSAL) flashes red when there is High Voltage present outside of the battery pack and stays a solid green when only the Low Voltage systems are active.

AMS

The Accumulator Management System (AMS) use a distributed BMS architecture to monitor for overtemperature and undervoltage/overvoltage in the cells in our main battery pack. It also communicates and responds to accumulator faults and communicates over CANbus to the rest of the car. 

... and there are more!

Message to PCB Way

We would like to collaborate with PCB Way for the 2023 season due to the higher quality PCBs and smaller tolerances that are offered. As reliability is always the overarching aim of the electronics team, optimising the quality of the boards will be crucial to us achieving our goals!

You can check out are Instagram a href="https://www.facebook.com/uwamotorsport" target="_blank">Facebook if you would like to contact us or check out more of our car!