About: Energy announces the expansion of “Drive to Recharge,” a student racing initiative. The program’s objectives are to alleviate the global battery skills gap, educate the next generation of battery engineers, and assist in the creation of 3,000 battery engineers by 2030.
“Formula Student: Drive to Recharge,” one of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ (iMechE) most established engineering contests in Europe, has expanded rapidly since its start in December 2023. Worldwide teams use gasoline or electric motors to design, build, test, and compete in small-scale formula racing events. Many teams are now making the conversion to all-electric vehicles because to developments in electric vehicle technology.
About:Energy since then has added 18 teams from eight other nations to this program. The expanded program now covers sponsorships of teams participating in a number of other events in addition to Formula Student UK, including the Shell Eco Marathon, the Electric Solar Vehicle Championship in India, Formula Bharat in India, FS Alpe Adria, MotoStudent in Spain, and Formula Student in Germany.
As part of the sponsorship, each team receives a replica of their preferred battery cell, state-of-the-art modeling tools, and instructional materials to help them develop a battery pack for a small-scale racing application.
Student racing teams are able to make well-informed design decisions to push the boundaries of performance and raise important battery pack performance metrics, like pack energy density and power density, while still maintaining safety, thanks to the availability of cell models.
With the help of About:Energy’s tools, university students may improve their ideas for battery packs by utilizing the same cutting-edge modeling tools that the biggest corporations in the world use. The goal of this program is to assist current government policies on training development with an emphasis on the battery sector.
This announcement builds the anticipation for the Formula Student competition, which took place at Silverstone on July 20–21. About: Nine teams, sponsored by Energy, demonstrated their inventions and faced off against some of the world’s top technical talent.
With numerous of its workers having previously participated in the program, notably Gavin White, CEO of About:Energy, who led Queen’s Formula Student team to a ninth-place finish in the UK in 2018, the company has a long relationship with Formula Student.
Gavin White, CEO of About:Energy said:
“Student racing competitions embody the ‘learning-by-doing’ approach, which is crucial in addressing the shortage of skilled battery engineers in our industry.
Our goal is to accelerate electrification by creating a seamless modelling experience that leads to faster and more cost-effective battery development. By equipping the next generation of engineers with these tools, we educate them on battery modelling capabilities, preparing them for future careers in the industry.”
The benefits of the program include enabling student teams to design faster, more efficient cars that are expected to place higher in both the design competition and the dynamic racing competition events and have more industry-ready battery engineers. Additionally, students’ employability is enhanced as they gain experience with industry-leading modelling tools and a deeper understanding of battery systems and simulation tools.
Michal Grzyb Team Leader, Light Electric Motorcycle (LEM), Wroclaw said:
“About:Enegry’s cell model helps us in designing new batteries and optimizing them both electrically and thermally, a task that has previously been very difficult, and sometimes even impossible when relying on physical experiments.”
These student teams operate on limited budgets and tight schedules, making physical testing costly and time-consuming. About:Energy battery pack models enable virtual testing and rapid design iteration. Simulations can determine the most optimal series and parallel cell configurations or the thermal management system type and layout without needing to build physical prototypes.
About:Energy intends to support additional teams in the future as the program develops, as well as provide specialized modeling workshops and battery pack design competitions to improve students’ skills with simulation tools.
In order to tackle the difficulties of the changing battery industry, About:Energy is working to build a talented future generation of battery engineers and to encourage innovation in battery research.
Student engineering teams interested in benefiting from the ‘Drive to Recharge’ initiative are encouraged to contact racing@aboutenergy.co.uk.
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