Key to the Growth of Taiwanese Teams

 

Taiwanese student teams are still in the development stage, and Mr. Nakanishi also offered suggestions for four resource areas where Taiwanese teams need to grow and learn:

 

🗝️Manpower – Cultivate capable students to ensure the team's continuous legacy and participation in competitions

• Establish a stable and sustainable team structure, passing on experience effectively to the next generation of members through a mentor system.

• Systematically cultivate students' engineering capabilities, focusing on the development of skills such as engineering design and validation.

• Strengthen hands-on ability and project execution through practical work.

 

🗝️Machine

• Strengthen resource support for the team in manufacturing and testing equipment.

• Testing is key! Early validation and avoiding rework can effectively improve overall vehicle reliability and development efficiency.

 

🗝️Money 

• Ensure stable sponsorship sources and improve budget control capabilities

• Strengthen industry-academia cooperation to establish long-term support relationships.

• Actively seek high-quality key components.

 

🗝️Information

• Master international team information and technological trends.

• Actively participate in international events, seminars, and exchange visits.

• Learn from the world's top teams to gain best practices!

 

"If you need action, you first need to define who you are."

 

A team's "best strategy" depends on the team's size, technology, stage, and goals.

 

Mr. Nakanishi hopes everyone remembers that no method is foolproof. For example, a team that wants to win and a team that wants to build their first car will inevitably have completely different resource allocations and strategic designs.

 

Therefore, before formulating any development strategy, the most crucial step is to clearly understand the team's current position and define the team's goals, so that they can choose the path that truly suits them and move forward steadily.

 

Regarding the cultivation of the above resources, Mr. Nakanishi also offered practical suggestions.

 

I. Establish Systematic Engineering Skills and Team Structure

 

• Clearly define team responsibilities

Clearly define the responsibilities of each team member from the outset, establishing a systematic organizational structure.

 

• Establishment of team database

Mr. Nakanishi cited the example of a Chinese team that developed its own shared databank, allowing all information to be accessed and shared anytime on a mobile phone.

 

• Importance of establishing technical documentation

The process of documenting technical information allows members to gain a more thorough understanding of the technology, and these documents can be preserved for future teams to reference and learn from.

 

II. Why should you test before installing?

 

Mr. Nakanishi shared a case study from the design of an electric vehicle's GLV (low-voltage system)—

 

Previously, a team encountered a very dangerous situation: the motor suddenly started rotating at high speed even though the system was shut down. This accident was not due to hardware failure but a systematic error that went unnoticed.

 

The key to the entire incident was the unsynchronized shutdown times of the motor controller (Inverter) and the vehicle control unit (VCU) CAN communication. Specifically, the motor controller used in this vehicle was designed for automotive applications and had a large-capacity capacitor built-in, capable of continuous power supply for short periods to cope with instantaneous voltage drops. However, if the vehicle controller was shut down first during the shutdown process, uncleared CAN signals were still transmitted to the motor controller, mistakenly activating the motor, ultimately leading to uncontrollable rotation.

 

Even more alarming, this team did not check for this scenario before the vehicle inspection. Later, it was also discovered that the vehicle controller itself had a software bug: when a specific connector was unplugged, the system mistakenly interpreted it as a "full throttle" state, causing the motor to instantly start at extremely high RPMs.

 

This incident is not just a technical error, but something every team should be wary of—before conducting full vehicle tests, it is crucial to test and validate every possible scenario. Otherwise, even seemingly insignificant differences can lead to unpredictable, or even dangerous, results.

 

Challenges in Electric Vehicle System Design

 

🔧The challenge of building an integrated system from scratch

 

Mr. Nakanishi also mentioned that electric vehicle system design is very challenging. When designing an electric vehicle (EV), engineers are not just choosing individual components, but building a complete integrated system from scratch. This is fundamentally different from the design approach for internal combustion vehicles (ICV).

 

🔧Differences between EV systems and traditional ICV systems

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🔧Key difficulties in electric vehicle system design—

 

In the development of electric vehicles, the design of GLV (low-voltage system) and TS (high-voltage system) is quite complex. These systems involve a large amount of design work and complex wiring planning. Without complete systematic planning beforehand, safety risks will be hidden, and even unpredictable problems may arise during subsequent testing or competitions.

 

Even more concerning, sometimes there may be no formal wiring diagrams, and all wiring logic is only in the designer's mind. Once the person in charge graduates or leaves the team, the system becomes difficult to interpret, leading to subsequent maintenance difficulties and a significant increase in error rates.

 

This also re-emphasizes: system design is not an individual task, but a common task for the entire team. To build a safe, stable, and transferable electric vehicle, the circuit design process must be "documented, visualized, and teamwork-oriented."