Egypt held the first ever Hybrid Electric car challenge earlier this month in Soma Bay Red Sea Resort in Hurghada, where 150 student engineers competed against each other from 9 different Egyptian universities.
Given a sample kit, each university put their brilliant minds together in less than a month to build and design the hybrid-electric car and come up with the best solutions to make the battery last as long as possible.
The students – most of which had only studied this process in theory – started testing out their knowledge and learning to come up with solutions to whatever problem came their way. “One of our greatest obstacles was time. We only received the kit a few days before the competition and have been working on it for 3 days straight ever since.” explained the CIC team.
The teams arrived on Wednesday, 9th of March to Soma Bay where they assembled their cars and worked on perfecting their designs. ” We hadn’t even added the mirrors yet, and so we bought everything along and worked on it once we arrived.” Zeweil University team leader told us.
Luckily for them, the number 1 champions of solar car races in the world, University of Michigan team, had come to support the teams and act as technical advisors to make sure each time meets the technical safety regulations. ” It’s great to be on the other side for a change. We’ve been racing for around 9 years and seeing these teams face a problem and run back quickly with a solution is something we’ve all gone through. But for their first time, they’ve managed to come up with some really creative design solutions and pave the way for a bright future for the upcoming teams in the years to come.”
One day prior to the race, Ain Sham University’s team car crashed into the wall leading to the frame of the car to collapse. But that didn’t stop them and they came back stronger than ever, winning first place in the accumulation of both races! ” We took the frame to Safaga to fix it and came back at dawn, where we practically re-built the entire car in just 4 hours!” Team leader of Ain Shams University, Abdelrahman Ibrahim explains.
The Ain Shams university not only won first place, but was also awarded the Best Teamwork award. They not only worked well under pressure, but were very helpful with all the other teams, too. “We didn’t stick to the manual when we received the kit, but felt that we could make things lighter and so we focused on weight reduction. We had one of the lightest cars out of all the teams competing. But the main aspect that helped in securing the first place was the plan we made for the two day race. Being an endurance race, we had to look at each driver’s advantage and set a plan to when each driver should be on the track.” Ibrahim tells us.
Coming up in second place in the accumulative races was South Valley University, in Qena, Upper Egypt. It was a huge surprise to see a university outside the capital excel in such a difficult field and proved that when given the right resources, there is huge potential in all Egyptians.
However, the South Valley University team came in 1st place with a stunning total of 132 laps on the second race. The team celebrated in joy and even did quite a happy dance.
“Everything came late, and we didn’t get that much help, but we still managed to win first place in the first race. We had previously found a problem in the battery and after fixing the equation for it, our battery lasted for 2 hours and 50 mins where at least 1 hour 40 mins of them we were holding the 1st place.” Mahmoud Eid explained to us.
In third place in the accumulative races came Banha University with 256 laps. “We won 3rd place in both races together, the Hybrid and Electric race. But the most important for us was the electric race, which we managed to secure first place in. We were the fastest team to fix the cars. We worked really well as a team and really enjoyed the work. Just because we are from Shubra University, it doesn’t mean we don’t have the ability to compete against other universities, on the contrary, we won first place!” Team Leader Abdelrahmen Hesham shared with us.
Although these three finalists received outstanding results, the other teams showed great potential, too. CIC University students received their kit a few days before the race and even though they did everything very last minute, they still managed to hold first place in most of the first race. In the second race however, even though they hit it off to a good start, they faced a few difficulties that set them back a few laps.
“The first problem we faced wasn’t really our fault, One of the media’s cameras dropped and we were stopped until they found it, which set as back 2 laps. After that our battery died and we had to stop once again to start the generator and maintain the speed we had started with. But our biggest setback was when one of our drivers crashed into the wall, ruining the tyre completely and we had to find a replacement. Luckily, Ain Shams University’s team had a spare tyre and were nice enough to let us use it, but trying to locate it and ask their permission made us lose a lot of time.” Team Leader Tarek Mahmoud told us.
During the first day of the race, AUC’s team knew they were in big trouble minutes after they crossed the start line. However on the second day, they made a great comeback and were competing on second place for the first half of the race.
“There was a problem with the fuse, the current wasn’t reaching the circuit and so it turned out our battery didn’t charge properly the first day. We only found out this problem in the last 10 minutes of the first race, but we fixed it and it made a huge difference in our performence during the second race.” Omar El Gendy told us.
“Omar made a plan of how to optimize the efficiency and usage of the car according to the data he collected from the first race. So that really helped us make a better plan and understand how much pressure to use and when to accelerate.” Omar Gaballah explained.
The teams seemed to learn a great deal from their experiences and even though most of them had very little time and resources, they managed to come up with great ideas to keep their cars going. The first prize award, given to the Ain Shams University team, is BMW sponsoring the team to compete in the Abu Dhabi race next month. But the Rea Sea Governer, Ahmed Abdallah was very proud of the outcome and promised to help send the second and third place winners to compete in the Abu Dhabi.
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