UWaterloo Formula Electric

The University of Waterloo Formula Electric (UWFE) team is a recent combination of the school's successful Formula Motorsports (UWFM) and Formula Electric (WFE) teams. The team seeks to build on the previous successes of UWFM and WFE, competing annually at both FSAE Formula Hybrid in New Hampshire and FSAE Formula Electric in Michigan. The team is composed of students from across the University of Waterloo's various faculties and based in the Faculty of Engineering's Sedra Student Design Center. Underlying UWFE's goal of building a powerful, agile race car is the mission to provide engineering students the opportunity to engage with real-world engineering design challenges, uniquely offering exposure to systems design, high-voltage electronics, and technical team management, among other skills.

This season, the team is looking to build a faster, lighter, and more efficient car, revamping and innovating upon the 2024 car's successes from the ground up. The car will compete with other FSAE student cars from universities across North America, testing its acceleration, endurance, agility, and reliability.

Part of building a reliable and optimized formula car is a robust and accurate electrical architecture, including all the PCBs managed within.

In the 2024 season, UWFE moved from a 300V battery architecture to a 600V battery architecture, necessitating fundamental updates to the electrical system. The team is proud to design, assemble, validate, and debug its own in-house Battery Management Unit (BMU). This PCB serves to track and manage important parameters of the battery pack, including its thermal performance, state of charge, and power output. Beyond that, the BMU also houses various important safety systems, such as insulation monitoring, a precharge system, and high-voltage active alert systems.

Apart from the BMU, the team also has a network of PCBs dedicated to optimizing the performance of the vehicle by supporting the team's own data acquisition system, which was brought up by members of UWFE's firmware team. This system comprises individual wheel-sensor PCBs that track the parameters of each of the vehicle's four tires, which communicate over an Ethernet bus with a central telematics control PCB. Beyond suspension characteristics, other parameters of the car, such as the temperature of the cooling system and steering inputs, are also tracked. The central telematics PCB in turn uses a cellular connection to send and store data for easy access by members of the team.

As a student-run team, UWFE achieves its success only with the contributions of various sponsors. Having PCBWay as a supporter would enable the Electrical team to prototype, refine, and iterate upon its electrical architecture by making use of PCBWay's manufacturing and assembly services. These resources would prove invaluable to the optimization and success of the car, and so UWFE is eager for the opportunity to collaborate with PCBWay.