High-performance connectors in the Formula Student race

Even before the big FIA Formula E championship race was established, Formula Student was putting its own electric race cars on the track back in 2010. This international competition is designed to be the world’s largest and most comprehensive engineering competition, with teams competing in different subareas. In the dynamic disciplines, factors like endurance, efficiency, acceleration, as well as curve and course driving are evaluated. In the static disciplines, judges look at engineering design, costs and business plans. The overall goal is to prepare the next generation of engineers for future e-mobility technologies.

Since the initial inclusion of the electric car class in the Formula Student event, the AMZ team (Academic Motorsports Club Zurich) from ETH, a Swiss university, have been a part of the competition — and since 2011, Stäubli’s highly compact, space-saving electrical connectors have been a part of their race cars. After all, the ambitious ETH team insists on using the best products for every functional system in the vehicle. Last year in Hockenheim (Germany), AMZ’s “Eiger” vehicle won the engineering design category and the overall competition. Stäubli connectors have been turning in impressive performances in AMZ vehicles for nine seasons now, and will be on board this year at the TTCircuit racetrack in Assen (Netherlands), the Red Bull Ring in Spiegelberg (Austria), the Hockenheimring (Germany) and the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona (Spain).

The EPFL (École Polytechnique de Lausanne) is also represented at the Formula Student with its Lausanne Racing Team (LRT). In this year’s motor design, round Stäubli connectors will be implemented for their high current carrying capacity while Stäubli battery connectors are tasked with reliable power transmission without losses.

Now in its fifth season, the young Formula Bern (FSB) engineering team from the Bern University of Applied Sciences also builds and drives vehicles for the student competition, and has already qualified for the competitions in the Netherlands (Assen) and Spain (Barcelona). They use Stäubli’s modular and vibration-resistant CombiTac connector system in their cars. The team’s electrical engineers were impressed with the custom-configurable system that’s quick and easy to assemble and provides extremely reliable, efficient and robust transmission of power and data throughout the vehicle.

Stäubli is proud to support young engineers from Swiss universities with innovative technology, and wishes them all successful results in the competitions at Formula Student 2019.