STUDENT-DRIVEN: Joint N.C. State/UNC Asheville mechatronics students construct electric race car from scratch.

• Author: Reed, Ryan

"Some of this stuff you can't just Google," says Nick Grandstaff, flashing a grin.

An understatement, to say the least. The mechatronics engineering student--who's studying with the joint N.C. State/ UNC Asheville Engineering Program--is detailing the long road of his ambitious senior design project: building an electric race car from scratch as part of the Formula SAE competition.

Back in April, Grandstaff, the captain and steering/suspension lead of a 10-student crew, was still rightly sweating the finer details of the project. They were two months away from the event itself, set for June 14-17 in Brooklyn, Michigan, and despite semesters of preparation, they're in expect-the-unexpected mode. Some issues, says electrical lead Maximo Perasso, are "notoriously difficult to simulate," so "real-world testing is the only way to figure them out."

But Grandstaff and Perasso have plenty of brain power at their disposal. They've been collaborating with eight other versatile seniors piloting specific areas of the project: Trysten Ruhland (power-train), Lief Van Sliedrecht (documentation), Robert Brenneman (chassis), Sarah Vyvyan (business/administration), John Sauvigne (fabrication and design), Hunter Horan (finance), Steven Anderson (vice chair of marketing/finance), and Gustavo Melo-Perez (sponsorship/marketing). They've also been guided, albeit gently, by two faculty advisors: N.C. State teaching professor and UNC Asheville lecturer of Engineering N. Moorthy Muthukrishnan and STEAM Studio co-founder Sara Sanders.

Naturally, a lot of meticulous science--and trial and error--is steering this enterprise. But it comes from a personal place: Hoping to combine two of his passions, motorsports and engineering, Grandstaff joined the school's SAE Club over four years ago, eventually finding a group of like-minded students. "We were working all those years, making slow progress," he says. "So we finally decided, if we actually want to get a car built, we have to make it a senior design project. That's when we got a lot of our friends to join."

Sanders worked with a previous Motorsports team back in 2016, attempting to build a go-kart in the STEAM Studio. Sanders is thrilled to support another eager group: "They have a ton of enthusiasm and drive," she says. "And one of the things that's particularly compelling is that it is student-driven."

In a critical part of the process, the students raised thousands of dollars in funding, helping pay for tires, brake...