Receiving the Best Design Execution plaque for our team.

The SuperMileage Vehicle Team at UMass Amherst aims to build a highly efficient vehicle to compete in the annual SAE Supermileage Competition held in Marshall, Michigan. The team is primarily comprised of senior mechanical engineering students. Every year, the team sets a number of goals to achieve by the time the competition starts in June of that year. In my junior year, I volunteered to help with the team to gain experience and to get familiarized with the vehicle in preparation for my senior year.

In my senior year, I was selected as the team captain to help ensure the team sets realistic goals and remains on track to meet those goals. While attending the competition in my junior year, I noticed that many other schools competing had vehicles with carbon fiber monocoques while our vehicle was still based on an aluminum chassis. We set out an ambitious goal of building a completely new body for the car.  With this goal in mind, we began reaching out to companies in the area who could help us build the new body. We set up an sponsorship deal with Boston Boatworks and Symmetrix Composite Tooling to create the molds and plugs to build the new body.

06/07/2019: Taking our vehicle through the technical inspection of the SAE competition in Marshall, Michigan. 

After many months of hard work, the team had the new carbon fiber monocoque ready and we headed to Michigan for the competition. The last few days before the competition, everyone on the team was hands on trying to ensure we have a reliable vehicle for the competition. Even though the team faced a number of obstacles the day of the competition, we were able to get a clean run and achieve 864 miles per gallon efficiency, which was nearly twice what the team had achieved the previous year. The team also won the best design execution award in recognition of the new carbon fiber body we had built.