The Road to EV Mode

After a lot of hard work, we have commissioned our A123 battery pack! There were a lot of steps to get to this point, and the electrical subteam has been busy all year preparing for this moment.

“Commissioning the battery pack essentially means that our pack has been deemed safe by A123,” said electrical subteam leader Brian Kelly. “We are now able to distribute power to the rest of the vehicle.”

To get to this point we had to complete certain steps. The first was to become familiar with the batteries. “We needed to know how they work and how they communicate with each other,” Brian said. The electrical subteam first completed the bench testing checklist where the batteries were literally placed on a bench so the team knew how to safely work with high and low voltage systems. The low voltage harness was connected to the high voltage batteries in a series and we performed different tests.

The next step was to complete the internals checklist. This is when the Energy Storage System (ESS), the actual structure that holds the batteries, was built. “We first built the ESS with wood so we could see what parts of the ESS we could build outside the car and the parts that we had to weld while in the car,” said electrical subteam member Tyler Erickson.

The ESS was built out of 20 gauge steel along with ⅛” tube steel, painted in maroon and orange, and then covered in Kapton tape. The Kapton tape isolates the steel from high voltage so the batteries are completely separated from any passenger in or out of the vehicle.

After the ESS was built, it was time to put in the batteries! “That was my favorite part,” said electrical subteam member Justin Hylton. “It was a lot of work, but when it was all done it was so rewarding.” The video below captures 30 hours of work in under two minutes.

After everything was in the vehicle it was time to submit the internals checklist to A123. “We talked with A123 over the phone and they had us fix any issues that they saw,” Brian said. “After we fixed everything A123 gave us the okay to power the vehicle with our battery pack.”

With the completion of the ESS, the controls subteam took over to begin working with the control code of the vehicle. “We needed to talk to components of the vehicle that don’t usually talk to each other,” said team leader Chris Manning. “That was a big challenge.”  The controls subteam was able to spin the rear traction motor, which is connected to the batteries, and thus spin the back wheels through electricity.

After working out a few kinks in the control code we pushed the accelerator and the car successfully ran in ALL ELECTRIC MODE! This is a huge step for us and could not done it without the support of the whole team, sponsors and our mentors.

We would like to thank platinum level sponsors, A123, for their help through the commissioning process and dSPACE for providing the controls tools necessary for running the vehicle. Comment below to congratulate us!