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The Quad 2020 project was initiated in the summer of 2018 by myself and three fellow students in Imperial’s Mechanical Engineering department. Our goal was to design and build the Worlds’ most powerful electric quad bike, then to break the lap record in the Quad Bike Class of the 2020 edition of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.
Pikes Peak is the worlds’ premier hill climb event. Located 12 miles west of Colorado Springs, ‘America’s Mountain’ is marked by 12.4 miles of winding tarmac stretching from its base — 9,390 ft above sea level — all the way way to the summit, at an altitude of over 14,000 ft. The thinning air during the climb considerably diminishes the performance of combustion-engined vehicles, making electric vehicles particularly suited to the event.
In June 2018, Volkswagen’s purpose-built I.D.R. Pikes Peak became the first EV to break the overall course record — doing so by over 16s. This was indicative of a trend in the preceding years towards EVs, with several teams challenging with both electric cars and motorcycles. The Quad Bike Class was the only class in the competition yet to see an electric-powered competitor.
I was responsible for the formal proposal of the project to a committee of academics at Imperial and, after it was officially accepted under the banner of Imperial Racing Green, I was appointed as Project Manager. In this role, I was responsible for everything from raising external funds and managing with internal stakeholders, to organizing and chairing design reviews, as well as overall project planning.
In addition to my management role, I was part of the Battery team. This gave me the opportunity to simultaneously work on a range of battery design, manufacture, and test activities. A head-to-toe experience!
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Members of our Battery Team looking for inspiration from Tesla’s Model S battery module!
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Battery Team members during a long night of prototyping in the pit garage
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Disassembling a previous years’ Formula Student battery pack to recycle their components — with my laptop used to interface to the battery management system (BMS) while performing a safe discharge of the pack!
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Functional testing of scavenged BMS masterboard
Functional testing of BMS and high-voltage relays
Functional testing of BMS masterboard and cell-level boards with small-scale test battery module
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Small-scale 2s3p ‘mini-module’ prototype
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Fit-check with laser-cut Delrin sheets on the Quad frame
Exploded view of battery module design
Template for correct cell positioning
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All 280 cells of the ‘fuel-tank’ module in alignment
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Fit-check of bus bars and harness routing
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Battery Team soldering BMS connections
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Completed ‘fuel-tank’ module
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4C discharge test of module under the supervision of PhD students and postdocs from the Electrochemical Science and Engineering Group
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Installing electrical boxes
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Final preparations before summer design exhibition
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Quad 2020 Battery & Powertrain teams at summer design exhibition at Imperial College