WSU Formula Electric makes headway on first car
By Midori Davis | Editor-in-Chief
After budget setbacks preventing them from competing in 2024, the WSU Formula Electric team at WSU Vancouver is back on track and gearing up for an electric racecar design competition in Michigan next spring: Formula SAE, an annual collegiate student design competition held by SAE International (formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers).
The club has just completed the chassis of their car, designed entirely by students and assembled by Longview-based professional welder Zachary Hoffman. Completion of the chassis is a major milestone, as it is one of the most important parts—so important that the design previously went through five different iterations since WSU Formula Electric was founded in 2021, according to the club’s public relations officer Jesus Morfín-Hernandez.
“If you have a weak chassis, you have a weak car, period,” said Morfín-Hernandez. “Although the team wanted to build it here on campus, unfortunately that would have taken a lot more money, resources and time that we just quite frankly did not have. However, we were able to find a local welder who was willing to help us out and weld the chassis… Now that we have actually something tangible, it’s just really nice to see.”
As a relatively young club, this is WSU Formula Electric’s first car in the making. Because they lack experience in completing cars and previously had nothing tangible to show potential sponsors, securing adequate funding to finance the car parts, assembly and participation in the competition has been a major obstacle—one that prevented them from meeting deadlines for the 2024 competition. Sponsors are critical for the team’s progress, as building a car is a complex and expensive project.
“The club operating budget wasn’t going to cover it,” said Morfín-Hernandez. “That would only have given us a maximum of $2,500 and if we attempted to go through the [ASWSUV] Senate [to get funding], it would have taken up their entire budget and still would not have paid enough for the car.”
The team has high hopes for winning over sponsors going forward. Morfín-Hernandez is confident that the completed chassis will invite more funding, interest and opportunities from sponsors for individual members as well as the team as a whole.
“The reason they give us this money isn’t because they want their name on our car when we go to a competition, that’s honestly the last thing they care about,” said Morfín-Hernandez. “What they care about is being able to be the first ones to contact all the team members, to offer them internships, to offer them job opportunities post-graduation… That’s what these companies really care about, they want first dibs on the team members.”
With the chassis complete, the team will begin working on the powertrain, suspension, and aerodynamics of the car. Formula SAE has specific rules and regulations for cars and how they are built that must be followed, as the competition includes static events for technical inspection and business presentations as well as dynamic events to test things like speed and acceleration.