Learning from 2024!
August 2025 Newsletter
As summer break comes to a close, activity at FRUCD has ramped up, preparing the club for the upcoming school year.
Electrical has been preparing FE12 for the upcoming track day by fixing failed circuitry and running through the steps of EV Active technical inspection. Their goal is to get FE12 running in order to get data on last year’s design and help each subteam get an idea on how their components are performing. As their revision on FE12 comes to a close, they’ve simultaneously been working on designs for FE13, including upgrades to major boards, reformatting the telemetry system, and looking into methods to organize the wiring harness off-car. Finishing all these big tasks will allow the team to be ready to go as soon as possible.
Shown in the video above is the new HVI in action, demonstrating the behavior of the tractive system status indicator (TSSI) when there is an insulation monitoring device (IMD) or battery management system (BMS) fault.
Now that a draft of the 2026 competition rules has been published, the chassis subteam has made its first round of design changes in order to ensure rules compliance. They are also in the process of implementing a new method of setting FE13’s torsional stiffness target, which will involve a collaborative effort with suspension and vehicle dynamics leads.
The wheel package subteam has also made strong progress this August, with summer session meetings now underway and design work on key components officially started. They’ve begun early CAD and conceptual development, focusing on performance and manufacturability as well as improving simulation setups to ensure more accurate and reliable results to ground their design. With all this in mind, they aim to finalize major designs, validate them through simulations, and begin preparing for manufacturing on minor components.
This month, aerostructures has kept productivity high, making strides in developing the FE13 aero package. In aerodynamics-specific news, they have finalized the rear wing airfoil setup and have started developing the front wing and undertray. To get our members involved in developing these parts, the team has started a design competition with the intent of developing their CAD and CFD skills. Aero has also finalized its plan on how to incorporate different levels of mesh fidelities when simulating the aero package. On the composites side, significant strides have been made in preparation for manufacturing. Material selection for the production of the aero package has been completed, in addition to process planning. From here, composites plans on beginning materials testing.
The business subteam, formerly known as operations, has been hard at work planning the upcoming events for the start of school. Keep an eye out for our Instagram for the upcoming track day and an exciting collaboration with the Crescent Cruisers auto club!
We can’t wait to see everyone there, thanks to all our members' hard work on the car and beyond!