Penn Electric Racing, Penn’s student-run Formula Society of Automotive Engineers electric team, unveiled their new car REVX in a March 28 ceremony on College Green.
The car will compete in the Formula SAE competition in June 2025. The model's weight has been reduced by 14 pounds compared to two years ago and features a new one-piece front wing that produces more downforce than any previous design.
The club calls the fall semester the “building semester” and focuses on manufacturing during the spring semester.
Engineering first year Sophia Wang’s “rookie project” for Penn Electric Racing focused on exploring car skeleton deformation. As a rookie, Wang also contributed to assembling the car’s skeleton.
“It's a big thing for the entire team, and we've been working up to this moment for a really long time,” Wang said of the reveal. “It's been very interesting to experience machining and helping drill holes, bend tabs, and with welding.”
Engineering first year Xavier Allen, who works on a theoretical and research-based aspect of the skeleton deformation project, says a major personal milestone was learning new methods like finite element analysis, which entails quantifying an object’s change when a different force is applied.
“It's a whole program and completely different things that I've never had to use in robotics or anything like that before,” Allen said. “That was cool to learn. I'm still trying to get the hang of it.”
Allen, whose project is more research based than physical, emphasized the importance of working carefully to avoid making mistakes.
“It's really fun to see the car slowly built up from nothing. It's cool to see everything slowly come together and be built up into something that looks and works really well,” Allen said. “I'm excited to show off the progress that I and the whole team have been working on for several months. It's been a long time coming.”
Engineering sophomore Zerlina Huang, who serves as the aerodynamics design and composites manufacturing lead for Penn Electric Racing, oversees three rookies who built a fully functioning system to recover energy from materials that would otherwise be wasted — something that the team hasn’t seen before.
Huang said that she can see the rookies’ improvements, from how they problem solve to how they manufacture new parts.
“Last year I was a rookie, and I had half a dozen amazing mentors who have helped me grow as an engineer,” Zerlina said. “Being able to mentor them through the design of an entire new system on our car, and seeing them succeed and grow as engineers as well, has been really rewarding this year.”
Now that the reveal has been completed, Penn Electric Racing will begin testing the car in Philadelphia ahead of the competition.
“I want my impact to push the car forward,” Wang said. “It'll be really interesting to see the car actually drive.”
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