16e Lives!  The ECEs have been having lots of fun driving it at high speeds around campus…

Two weeks ago, 24 Carnegie Mellon Racing team members traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska to compete in the 2016 Formula SAE Electric Competition. On Wednesday, the team worked through the heat of the day and into the night finalizing the assembly of 16e, getting it ready for both electrical and mechanical inspections. Thursday, the team had a chance to display our year of work, starting with our Sales Presentation in the morning. In the afternoon, we presented 16e’s design to judges, showing everything from our mass optimized suspension components to a complete hardware in the loop cart. Friday, we received our results, with 9^th in Design Presentation, 9^th in Sales Presentation, and 17^th in the Cost event. While not quite the results we hoped for, we made CMR history that night by spinning 16e’s wheels, our first successful start of an electric car for two years. Over the past two weeks, the team has made great progress in final troubleshooting and getting 16e race ready. With 16e running and great feedback from design judges, the team is ready to begin work on our next car.

Thanks so much to our team sponsors! Your help to our team has allowed us to develop as a unit and create our best car yet. We appreciate all you’ve done for us, and we hope to keep growing as we start design on next year’s car! Continue following us on our website or the Carnegie Mellon Racing Facebook page for updates as we start working on 17e!

Maker Faire Pittsburgh, the region’s largest showcase of making, building, and creating, is coming Oct. 10th & 11th to the Northside! Part science faire, part show and tell, and part carnival, the Faire features all kinds of makers, with projects ranging from high-tech to low, amateur to professional, and practical to ridiculous!

We are proud to announce that Carnegie Mellon Racing will be part of this year’s Maker Faire! We will be showcasing CMR 15e, an all-electric, Formula-One-style performance racecar from engineers at Carnegie Mellon University.

To learn more about the Faire, including where to get tickets or how you can volunteer, visit the Maker Faire Pittsburgh website here: http://bit.ly/1MXuQUr

Last week CMR trekked to Loudon, NH to compete in the 2015 Formula Hybrid Competition. Over the first couple of days, we worked hard to pass electrical and mechanical technical inspections. During the initial Design Event on Tuesday, we impressed the judges enough to make it into the Design Finals along with IIT, the team with whom we shared a garage bay all week. We kicked off Wednesday morning with a strong Project Management Presentation, earning the third-highest score in this category, and went on to win Design Finals that afternoon for the second year in a row. By Thursday morning, we had secured a good lead and were in first place. However, Tufts swept the Endurance event that day and won First Place, resulting in a Second Place finish for CMR within the Electric Class. But CMR brought home two trophies Thursday night–we also won the prestigious IEEE Excellence in Electric Vehicle Engineering Award.

Thank you to all of you, our generous crowdfund supporters! It was awesome to have so many parents come out to see us compete, and we are looking forward to our next competition, Formula Electric, in Lincoln Nebraska next month!