Engineering A Car
There are 1 billion passenger vehicles on the road today. The car is such an American commodity. To do almost anything in this world, you need a vehicle to get there. With that said, not many people know how they work. A working mom doesn’t care about how their car works until it breaks down and they have to pay to get it fixed. This last semester, my school engineering class took on the project of building our own electric vehicle. There were around 15 kids total who worked on this care. We decided to break down assembly into different categories: battery building, mechanics, electrical boards, and chassis. I chose to work on the battery. Along with three other students, we were completely responsible for the assembly and creation of this battery. This “battery“ isn’t like the ones you can find in your garage. Created using 32 different cells, each has to be wired to the other in a specific manner. Connecting any wrong wires will cause the battery to short and make it practically unusable. This isn’t just a logical problem when building a car, it is a financial problem. Another risk to building the battery incorrectly would be it is incredibly dangerous. Connecting the wrong wires or accidentally making contact with your own skin would result in a deadly amount of electricity to run through your body: not great for a human.
Even though each team is initially working independently, they have to coordinate the timing of their machinery. The work can be separated into sections that can work in parallel until everything needs to be fit together. This is where it becomes imperative that everyone has done their job correctly. Just like in an assembly line in a factory, every piece of equipment affects another. Every bolt has to be tightened to the perfect amount to prevent either bending or falling off. Every wire has to be properly secured to prevent shorting. Every piece of hardware has to be perfectly in line. This high level of quality is exactly what is demanded when professionals build cars.
the car chassis after being painted and sanded
My battery group did receive a set of plans. At first, I was l was slightly disappointed because of that. I don’t like just following plans. I was never someone who liked legos because it was already built for you in the book, you just had to put it all together. But after taking a look at the book and comparing it to the parts that we had, I soon realized that I judged too quickly. The instructions we were given were from an older model of the plans. My group still had to think for ourselves on how the updated parts that we got would work together to create a battery. Along with that, some of the parts required were not shipped to us. We were able to call the company and request shipment of all of the parts to continue building the battery. What I assumed would be a completely thoughtless assembly of an already determined battery plan quickly became a problem-solving activity.
the batteries lined up in their compression box before being wired
After hours of struggling with the plans, we successfully wired the batteries in parallel to charge them. Before charging, however, we had to compress the batteries so that they didn’t expand when they charged. We blotted two metal panels to either side of the battery cells. After they were charged, we undid everything and rewired all of the cells in series. We then dropped heat sensors into the battery that would let a computer know when to shut off the car if the battery overheated. Finally, I worked to complete the electronics that would attach the battery to the dashboard and the rest of the car. Again, many wires and parts were either mislabeled or changed from the photos that we received. Once we began constructing the electronics, it became imperative that we communicated with the other teams to see how far along they were. As all of the different car building teams finished, we loaded the battery onto the chassis and attached the final wires. With a push of a button, the car engine turned on. A group of 15 teenagers successfully built a car.
This project was an opportunity that I never imagined myself having. Not many kids can say they built a car at age 16. I was incredibly proud of the work that I did to get the battery to this stage and how successful it was. After around a month, we took everything apart and packed everything back into the boxes. Next semester, a new engineering team will again assemble the car, but every problem will already be solved for them. My class persevered through missing parts and incorrect instructions all to create a finished project that we were all proud of.