IFE is a student led organization that investigates methods to improve performance, efficiency, and reliability of electric vehicles. The car is designed and manufactured to compete against teams from many universities in the international FSAE Electric competition. This year, the team will be perfecting previous year’s design through testing and data collection. This project will improve battery efficiency through optimized temperature management and reduced losses in the drivetrain

This team's sight is set on developing an all-wheel drive platform where four hub-motors power the wheels independently. Doing so will require a completely new design of the entire car as the drive train setup, motor controllers, battery packs, suspension, and chassis will all have to be re-designed to accommodate the new layout. By developing custom motor controllers tailored for this application, this team can implement many cutting-edge designs like higher switching frequencies and wide-band gap transistors which are not commercially available yet. These will enable this team to utilize high fundamental frequency motors which are inherently more efficient and use less material to manufacture, while also being lighter, and thus increasing vehicle range.

The new layout will provide granular control over the vehicle dynamics which increases overall performance. It will also result in drastically lower weight in

• Motor controller due to accurate thermal margins

• Motors due to compact design and effective cooling

• Chassis due to reduced stiffness requirements

All these, along with an inherently more efficient drivetrain, result in gains in efficiency, reducing the required size of the battery as well as the environmental impact of the design.