IIT Madras students’ team unveils its first electric racing car

Students of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) on Monday launched the first electric formula racing car from the institute. Built completely by students’ Team Raftar, the formula car ‘RF23’ is the result of a year-long process during which the team undertook the design, manufacturing, and testing.

Team Raftar, which comprises 45 students from various disciplines and is one of the competition teams of Centre For Innovation (CFI) at IIT-M, aims to become the best Formula Student team in the world and intends to promote Formula student culture in India with continuous innovation and sustainable technological advancement at its core.

In terms of performance, the students expect to see significant improvements in speed and lap times compared to the earlier Internal Combustion Engine model due to the higher power delivered by an electric drive.

As a Formula Student Team, Raftar specializes in designing, building, and racing a high-performance race car every year to compete in Formula Student competitions against top engineering institutions across the world.

“The shift from combustion to electric vehicles was just as drastic as it was necessary, keeping in line with the global trend of moving towards sustainable transportation. With the global electric vehicle industry still in its nascent state, the potential for growth and technological advancement in this arena is huge,” Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT-M, said.

The team will be participating in the Formula Bharat event, scheduled to be held in January 2023 at the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore and aims to take the newly-developed car to the world’s most prestigious Formula Student event, Formula Student Germany in the August of 2023.

“Raftar will soon become a platform to build future innovations such as driverless cars and connected mobility technology. ‘RFR 23’ showcases the endless hours and efforts taken by each and every member of the team over the past year,” Prof. Satyanarayanan Seshadri, Faculty Advisor, Team Raftar-IIT-M, said.

Karthik Karumanchi, Student Team Captain, Team Raftar-IIT-M, said their primary focus was to build a safe, sustainable and reliable electric vehicle and that they approached this goal by taking a look at the issues currently faced in the industry and trying to devise innovative solutions for them.

“We recognized the need for proper thermal management of the battery, a robust data logging and visualization interface, and a highly accurate State-of-charge estimator for the battery pack. We based our projects on finding solutions to these problems and incorporating them into ‘RFR 23’,” he said.

Another member of the team, Gaurika Bindal, said to coordinate the daunting task of building an entire vehicle easier, they divided themselves into eight smaller groups focusing on a certain aspect of the car to fully optimize the system under them. These subsystems include aerodynamics, frame and composites, vehicle dynamics, drivetrain, accumulator (or battery systems), high voltage, and cooling systems, and low voltage systems.