Northeastern Electric Racing is a new competitor bringing major innovation
This student club builds custom electric race cars that have performed well in national engineering challenges despite its status as a relative newcomer. For students, it’s an experience like no other.
Riyana Roy has been interested in cars ever since she was a Hot Wheels-collecting, NASCAR-watching child. Now, she’s designing them.
Roy and the team of more than 100 engineers at Northeastern Electric Racing, a student club at Northeastern University, have poured their blood, sweat and tears into bringing custom, competition-ready electric race cars to life. In the span of four years, the club has been ranked at national and regional competitions alongside university teams that have existed for 30 years.
Through all-nighters pulled in the club’s underground engineering bay and the highs and lows of competition, the engineers in the racing club push their physical and mental limits, grow skills that help them secure jobs and forge friendships that last a lifetime. But most of all, Roy said, they have fun.
“The feeling of seeing the car drive for the first time or seeing the car pass all of our technical inspections at competition, that’s a feeling that you can’t beat,” said Roy, the club’s incoming president and a senior data science and business administration student. “Experiencing it with the people you’ve worked so hard with who understand what you went through is pretty unique and very special.”
Northeastern Electric Racing is now in its fourth year competing at the national Formula SAE competition and regional Formula Hybrid+Electric competition. To build an electric race car capable of passing rigorous technical tests by competition judges and speeding down a track at 80 miles per hour is challenging enough. Doing so in a year makes the process even more intense.
The team’s engineering bay, located in the tunnels underneath Northeastern’s Boston campus, is often a hive of activity, as the team of electrical, mechanical, industrial and computer engineering students constantly makes adjustments to improve the car’s performance.
In addition to mechanical components like wheels and a chassis, software and computer code control many of an electric car’s capabilities, explained Chris Pyle, the racing club’s chief software engineer and a third-year computer science student. Code is used to process inputs from the car’s steering wheel and pedals, and the club’s engineers even use software to run simulations on “how the car will behave at different turns and different positions,” Pyle said.
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NER’s car is largely a custom-built machine. Many teams will buy the components to build their car. At Northeastern, everything from the chassis that frames the car to the software that helps run it is made in-house by students. The car’s on-track performance is part of what determines a team’s performance in the competitions. But team members’ ability to rank is largely about the engineering and design of the car, so these in-house decisions become even more important, Pyle said.
It helps them have more control over the vehicle, but it also means they have to learn skills that most students might never pick up during university.
“You have to make sure you know all of your budget,” said Max Meoli, a third-year electrical engineering student. “You have to make sure you reach out to your manufacturers to get all of your parts in time.”
Unlike a lot of their competitors, the club has an open-door policy, accepting all students regardless of their skill level.
“Co-op is about starting to join the workforce; this is making your own workforce,” said Will Laroche, NER’s former chief operations officer and a second-year industrial engineering and business administration student.
Meoli had never worked with printed circuit boards before he joined the club. He said the skills he’s acquired through NER not only helped him grow as an engineer but also helped land him a co-op at global robotics leader Boston Dynamics.
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The year-long process of building a competition-ready car is an intense one, Roy said.
It’s normal to find students hunched over the car overnight and into the early morning hours. One student might be taking a nap on an air mattress in the corner, while another is making a late-night run to Wollaston’s, the convenience store on Northeastern’s Boston campus, to grab snacks and sandwiches to keep everyone fueled.
But all those hours are worth it, Roy said. Seeing their motor spin for the first time or taking the car out for a sunset test drive on the Columbus Avenue parking garage is thrilling, but the connections that all this intense work fosters between students keep the team coming back, Roy said.
“We always joke that if we could all just work at a company together, we would do it because everyone loves each other so much,” she said.
This past year, the team had its fair share of struggles. It came in ninth place in the regional Formula Hybrid+Electric competition, but its car was only able to drive one of its six laps before its battery broke down. The car didn’t even make it on the track at Formula SAE, where they placed 86th out of more than 130 teams.
“I’m very proud of everything we did this year, and we’ve taken lots of steps forward,” said Matthew Clarke, a third-year mechanical engineering student and outgoing president of NER. “The end product is not as close to where we would want it to be, but I think we have a really strong trajectory as a club.”
It was a disappointing result for the team, Roy admitted, but a huge motivator too.
“I’m excited to see what we all do together as a full team because I have a good feeling,” Roy said. “I want to see this team be proud of their work.”
