Newsletter September 

The last weeks we have been busy with events. We were present at the EV Experience and the World of Technology and Science with HELUKABEL.
 

In the weekend of 23 till 25 of September we were present at the Electric Vehicle Experience (EV Experience) at Circuit Zandvoort. It is the biggest event in electric mobility in the Netherlands and meant to show the latest progression to the public. Our team had a great time racing electric vehicles and of course showcasing the Apex-RX! There was a lot of interest in our electric motorcycle, but unfortunately for the public, this one was not available for a test drive… 
Next to presence of our team, we were greatly supported by EST members of previous years during the weekend. In the end, it was a very nice and successful first event for us as new members of EST 6!

World of Technology & Science (WoTS) with HELUKABEL
The World of Technology and Science took place at the Jaarbeurs Utrecht, where we were invited by HELUKABEL on their beautiful booth. The WoTS is the fair for technology and science in the Benelux and offers a view of the latest innovations. Every day four of our teammembers went to Utrecht to represent Electric Superbike Twente. The WoTS was a great way to get to known our partner HELUKABEL. Besides that, the Apex-RS attracted a lot of attention from the visitors and we explained our technical parts and visions to the visitors and companies. We want to thank HELUKABEL for inviting us to the fair!

Our overall goal for the coming year is to design and manufacture a new electric superbike! As this contains many different aspects, creating a new electric superbike will be part of a two year design cycle. While doing this, our focus will lie on reducing the bike's weight, so we can be even faster in the future. Designing and building a reliable, well-handling and fast electric superbike has been proven difficult in the past. This year, our team wants to pay more attention to these points.

Besides that, we disassembled the Apex-RS together with the team members of EST5, to obtain hands-on experience with an electric superbike and to learn about important design choices. We are hyped to get started with the new bike!
 

The first month of our year is almost finished and it flew by! We had a lot of discussions about our mission and vision, our plans, our planning, and other things. The first plans were presented to the “Raad van Toezicht” (RvT), where we got positive feedback from previous EST teams. Besides that, the whole chassis team went to Doetinchem for a few days, to follow multiple Solidworks trainings given by Cad2M. It was quite cosy with 5 men in one small car, but the first certificate has been earned for the Solidworks Refresher training! More trainings about weldments, simulations, surface modelling and advanced parts modelling are planned in the near future. This will be very useful, when we start to design the different components of our superbike. The coming weeks, we are focused on finalizing our plans for the coming year, followed by starting to design the different components. We are eager to dive into this challenge, but we first want to create a solid foundation to work on.
 

We have been busy for about a month already. We have studied the matter of the previous years and we are currently setting goals and a direction for this year. One thing we are going to do is improving the CAN system. Cable harnesses where used a lot in the past, but implementing CAN improves the system by decreasing cables. In The past the Electronic Control Unit (ECU for short), which is the brain of vehicles, had to be wired to all sensors from all over the vehicle. This meant that there were a lot of cables. The previous team improved this system by using nodes. These nodes are small computers and are closer to the sensors. They are connected by CAN, which is a protocol using 2 wires only. This year, we will not use a ECU at all. The nodes will do all the work the ECU would have done. Doing this decreases the number of cables and the wiring will be easier to do.