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Originally Posted by JamesCH95
I did FSAE in college. If you (OP) don't think there's a spot for EEs on an FSAE (or other automotive team) you're dead wrong. On our 2009 car we had a completely custom power distribution board designed and populated by one or two students. Think FRC PD board, but considerably more sophisticated: it had various power control relays, fuses, and a few CAN-bus controlled features. We also had a 100% custom CAN-bus dashboard that had a configurable F1-style tach light, configurable sensor readouts, a display screen, and other CAN-bus driven features. We attempted, but didn't implement, closed-loop traction control, which is simply chock full of EE elements. This is just scratching the surface of what EE-related things are possible in an SAE program.
A big benefit of any SAE program is that your research and experiments can be publishable and you get authorship as an undergraduate in a straight-forward manor.
I have been told by certain member(s) on CD that they 'don't respect FSAE.' Don't be fooled into thinking that because the design space is heavily worked-over that there isn't room for innovation or that there isn't challenging work to do. Furthermore, if you thought you worked hard on FRC during build season, brace yourself for a whole order of magnitude larger effort to get an FSAE or BajaSAE car ready!
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I'm on the FSAE team and the chief engineer on the CSC team, as an EE.
On the FSAE team, I led a project where we wrote all of the engine code on top of a rapid prototype controller platform, we later refined it a lot with the CSC team and ended up with a full-authority electronic throttle engine controller.
We have also developed both a fuse box and a steering wheel.
In fact, we have only 5 EE/CE's now and we need more.