Online Competition of Small Electric Vehicle as an Exercise in Design Education - pico-EV Eco Challenge –

Abstract

To develop sustainable societies, it is necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Therefore, widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs) is the need. Many subjects such as mathematics-and physics-based-mechanics of machine taught at the universities are useful to meet this problem. However, to design EVs, the ability to unify such knowledge along with the fabrication cost, time management, and teamwork management is necessary. We think that EV competition is a useful exercise in design education that helps develop this ability. Considering the energy problem, we proposed an official competition for small EVs, named “pico-EV Eco Challenge”, as an exercise in engineering design education. In this competition, a small one-person EV using only small rechargeable batteries (7.2 V, 1000 mAh in total) is fabricated and the fabricated EVs run a 60 m circuit. The competition in the years 2021 and 2022 was held on online due to COVID19 pandemic. In this paper, the competition criteria, the flow and the analyses of EVs on 2021 competition are described.