• The Cost Report is a Bill of Materials detailing the costs to produce the team’s prototype vehicle using standardized cost references.

• The Cost Scenario asks for each team’s strategic response to an event outside their control.

• How to find the optimum concept for your overall racecar

• How to nail down the concept before putting effort into perfecting its systems

• How to get more design points for overall racecar design

• How to create a design process that can be handed down to succeeding teams

FMEA can capture the dangerous things cars may do when put in an unsafe state, and can help the team verify they meet and exceed safety regulations and requirements.

• Materials catalog updates

• Process changes in forming, coatings, machining

• Tooling changes: 3x metal, 2x plastic/rubber, 1x PCB

• New materials for fasteners and standoffs

• Significant revamp of Electrical and Drivetrain sections

• New approach for custom PCB costing

• Most electronic modules are still cost as bought

In the time it takes to read this sentence, design finalists are capable of presenting data from the same day’s Autocross, along with analysis of which assumptions the data validates or invalidates, how it fits with all their other testing, and what the next steps are to continue improving the car and drivers. They do this for everything, all year.

Doing research, reverse engineering, setting design targets. Additional insight for teams thinking about making the EV transition.

Engineering is about finding the Goldilocks Solution. Cost is not separate from engineering; indeed it must go hand in hand with it. Good engineering practice goes beyond the merely technical, and encompasses knowledge of customers, supply chain, society, environmental impact etc. 

Chris Warren provides some tips for what to expect and how to approach the design event.

Instead of thinking that you have to fill up X number of pages for the design report, the mentality should be “how can we fit all of our knowledge and work into these pages?”

Stopwatches, garage beams, thermometers, cameras, chalk, zip ties, yarn, and smartphones.