During development of the Electric Vehicle, the MIT team faced many challenges including testing and optimizing their new electric motor powered drive train. They needed to characterize their motors and turned to the experts at Interface for help developing an electric motor test stand.

1. Interface Inc., • www.interfaceforce.com • phone: +1-480-948-5555 Page 1.
MIT Motorsports Formula SAE
Electric Race Car
Formula SAE is a student design competition organized by SAE International, formerly
known as the Society of Automotive Engineers. Conceived of in 1978 at the University of
Houston, the first organized competition was held at the University of Texas at Austin in
1981 and included only 6 teams. Since then it’s grown into a major event including well
over 100 teams from all over the world.
The MIT Formula SAE team was started by two aspiring young freshmen in 2001 and
has since grown into the current team of about 30 students. The team has garnered recent
national recognition with two back-to-back, top-10 finishes at FSAE West in California.
In 2013 a new vehicle class was introduced called Formula SAE Electric. The MIT
Motorsports team decided to change direction and design an electric vehicle to compete in
the first Formula SAE Electric competition in the US – held in Lincoln, NE last year. The
decision and hard work paid-off with a 16th place finish out of over 120 teams at the FSAE
competition in Michigan.
During development of the Electric Vehicle, the MIT team faced many challenges
including testing and optimizing their new electric motor powered drive train. They
needed to characterize their motors and
turned to the experts at Interface for help
developing an electric motor test stand.
After consulting with an Interface
application engineer, the HRDT (High
Resolution Digital Torque Transducer)
with integrated couplings was selected as
the torque transducer of choice for their
rigorous testing program. Advantages of
the HRDT were compact installation, high
accuracy and large overload capability.
Figure 1. http://web.mit.edu/fsae/index.html