By: Isabella Urbani, Staff Writer
Do you have a need for speed? Since 2017, Team Phantom has been designing fully-operational electric vehicles for racing competitions. The club was started by students majoring in mechatronics at SFU — a branch of engineering specialized in mechanical, electrical, and electronic elements of building. The club originally started out building electric go-karts but switched to assembling electric cars from scratch. The team enters their car into electric competitions hosted by the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), who also put on other competitions as part of their Collegiate Design Series.
The Peak spoke with operations director and mechatronic SFU student Alex Cherniavskii about how the club strives to make their cars as sustainable as possible. Since the cars run on electricity and don’t produce any emissions, they are “cleaner than a traditional combustion-engine.” This helps the team demonstrate that crafting smaller scale electrical vehicles is practical, and helps prospective engineers build the skills necessary to pursue a career in sustainability.
“We already have club alumni that started their own cleantech company, Moment Energy, and we have both current and past club members currently working at industry-leading electric transportation and energy companies,” said Cherniavskii, who currently works as an intern for Tesla.
As the next generation of engineers, Team Phantom is mindful of what they can do during their projects to limit emissions. “It will be our responsibility to ensure that we do things to ensure the integrity of our future as a collective of people that live on this planet [ . . . ] We all know what’s coming, so it is our job to recognize that we can apply ourselves to improve the outcome as much as we can.”
Part of using greener building methods also means picking and choosing when to use resources. Instead of competing annually, Team Phantom participates in races every other year. In order to design a car from the ground up to race every two years, Team Phantom is split into four sub-team — controls, dynamics, frame/aero, and power — and a business team to seek out sponsorships to make their cars.
The control team is the driver’s right-hand man. They build the communication system the driver uses to remain in control of the vehicle at all times. The dynamics team is the car’s eyes and ears. They make sure integral parts of the car such as the breaking and steering system are good to go. The frame/aero team give a hand to the car’s structural design, including its bodywork. And lastly, the power team is the heart of the system, constructing and managing the electrical system of the car to power the motor. Once a vision for the car has been assembled, the team gathers together to weld and assemble the metal parts.
Due to the team’s two-year design focus, the team will not be competing at this year’s Formula SAE Electric competition, but is preparing for next year’s. They are close to assembling the car, with plans to test drive in the fall. When ready, the car will be judged in comparison to other entries from schools across the world based on two main categories: static and dynamic. The static category consists of a technical inspection of the car, a presentation by the team to a panel of judges, a cost and manufacturing component to evaluate the team’s business savviness, and a design event. The dynamic portion, on the other hand, looks at the on-track racing abilities of the car in three races: acceleration on a straight path, skidpad event for evaluating turns, and the car’s overall performance.
Team Phantom relies on a plethora of sponsors to get the resources needed for their car each competition, including support from the Simon Fraser Student Society and companies such as Race Energy Performance. But when the club isn’t bringing their creations to life, they are visiting local middle schools and high schools with building challenges, such as hydrogen-fuel powered mini-cars, to inspire young STEM students. On their website, Team Phantom explains they do this because “to teach is to learn twice.” The club is true to this mantra by accepting all student members, regardless of experience, to partake in the building process.
“It takes an immense amount of engineering work to engineer a good but safe racing vehicle, so it’s rewarding to see the design once it is built,” said Cherniavskii. “But I think the most important part is the amount of learning that happens during the process, as that is what contributes to long term future career success and builds skills that lead to being able to do even more technical things down the road.”
You can find more information on Team Phantom by heading to their website and checking out their Instagram page for updates on their latest design.
