WESMO is The University of Waikato’s motorsport team that makes an open-wheeled, formula style vehicle to compete in FSAE-Australasia. The competition is held in Melbourne at the end of each year for universities around Oceania. 2023 marked the final hurrah and the retirement of internal combustion driven vehicles for WEMSO. Electric vehicles have been becoming more favoured by the FSAE competitors in the past few years due to their higher performance potential and greener image, naturally WESMO wants to stay competitive.
For 2024 WESMO will dive into and develop a vehicle with an electric powertrain; a first for WESMO.
WESMO begun research into the groundwork of an EV last year in 2023 with honours research projects in mechatronics, electrical, and software engineering. It is suggested by several FSAE-A teams that two to three years of research and design is needed before a fully functional EV is ready for the competition. The aim for the team is to break the status quo and have an electric vehicle ready for Melbourne this coming December.
This is a large endeavour for the team, but 2023 proved that WESMO can do anything with only five people designing the final ICE car.
Overall, this now makes WESMO a large multi-disciplinary project that will need the hands of students from all engineering specialties to get stuck in with, whereas the project historically has been largely mechanical based.
