Students’ electric sports car Rs5m away from Germany

Karachi
A group of engineering students in the city are building a sports car powered by electricity. Yes you read it right – a sports car powered by electricity.
Given the infamous shortage of electricity in the country and considering the huge amount of funds required to manufacture the car, the students are indeed in for a tough time ahead.
The aspiring engineers study at the Pakistan Navy Engineering College (PNEC) and are working on finishing the project before July so they can showcase it at the Formula Student global competition to be held in Germany.
“We registered for the competition with our own funds but now we need more to complete the project,” said Muhammad Mansoor, a final-year student who leads the group of young engineers who call themselves the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers.
“The design phase is almost complete and we are now in the manufacturing phase,” he added.
“The chassis is complete and we have ordered some parts from China which will arrive soon.”
The team needs around Rs5 million to be able to complete the project and travel to Germany for the competition. “We desperately need multinationals to finance our initiative,” Mansoor appealed.
This year is the tenth anniversary of the Formula Student Germany, a competition that invites students from all over the world to design, build, test and then present them at the event.
This year, 115 teams from more than 34 different countries will participate in the competition which has been divided into two categories, combustion cars and electric cars.
Mansoor’s group, the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers, will be competing in the Formula Student Electric competition with 39 other teams from across the world. Similarly, 40 teams are also registered to compete against each other in the Formula Student Combustion competition.
Each team has to spend a year designing, building and then testing its car before presenting it at the event to be held in Hockenheim.
Mansoor said other Pakistani students had successfully designed combustion cars before but his team was the first group to venture into designing and building electric cars.
He added that the structure of the car would be built from carbon fibre, a material which was strong but not heavy at all.
This way, the car will travel at a great speed without using a lot of power. The car designed by the team will travel at about eighty kilometres per hour.
“It will be able to seat one person, just like the Formula One cars,” he said. “We have built the frame and are now installing the structure of its body.”
However, right now, the biggest concern for the students is to generate enough funds to be able to manufacture the car in time.
Shariq Waqar, a first-year engineering student, is dealing with the nitty-gritty of fetching sponsors.
“At the moment we are trying to get multinational companies and franchises to sponsor us so that we are able to manufacture the car and travel with it to Germany,” he said.
The students are being helped in their endeavour by the head of the engineering faculty at National University of Science and Technology (NUST), Faisal Amir, who is also their project supervisor.
When asked what support the NUST administration was providing to the students, he praised the students and said they had complete access to the university’s laboratories.
“They are doing a commendable job and we are trying to help them in any way we can,” he added. “Since it is their own venture, the group often stays late to work on the project after classes are over.”
The car made its first public appearance at the Pakistan Auto Show 2015 which concluded on Sunday. The team’s Facebook page can be accessed at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/formulae.racing.nust