Each year, Schell Company hosts an international competition to select a car with “the highest energy efficiency” in response to the climate crisis and the large impact of the automotive industry on global carbon emissions. In simple terms, the competition is meant to see which car will go a farther distance with minimum energy consumption. Thus centering around the seventh UN Sustainable Development Goal: Affordable and clean energy. Continental competitions are held initially, after which the winners gain the opportunity to move on to the World Championship Series. Hisar Scool as been preparing for the regional competition for Europe and Africa, which will be held on May 20-25, 2023 in Nogaro, France.
Although this competition is dominated by companies and university teams as participants, Hisar Mechatronics is one of the numbered high school teams in Eco-marathon. As a result, Hisar Mechatronics students need to put extra effort into getting the necessary know-how of how an electric car works and each small detail behind what meets the eye. In past years, Hisar mechatronics collaborated with professionals in Yıldız Teknik University and Istanbul Teknik University by receiving mentorship, observing senior engineering teams in the universities, and emulating that environment at Hisar.
Although Hisar Mechatronics’ Eco-marathon team welcomes any and all students who share a passion for engineering, automotive, coding or even high level mathematics, most of its newer generations are students who worked effectively and wanted to pursue their passion from Hisar’s own Vex teams. Due to the high level mathematics and physics building a car requires, newcomers are put through a year-long training process where they enroll in a google classroom and learn concepts in automotive mechanics, advanced calculations and in physics. Through this process, added to the exposure to the actual processs and working environment of building a car, students often explore niche positions and responsibilities within the team to pick an area of interest and focus on that exclusively in their following years.
"The competition has an incredibly strict set of technical requirements for the competing projects, one of which is that teams cannot use pieces or code from external resources. This means that the Hisar Mechatronics team has to learn about and build every part of the car: from the motor, to the design, or the code. For instance, this year the team began using the Matlab programming language to develop its code for the car. As this is a new concept for everyone on the team, a collaborative learning process is being developed.
The Eco-marathon team of Hisar Mechatronics works in the container next to the bubble. Students gather and work in their club times and afterschool. Hisar Mechatronics aims to build and test their car in its every aspect, so that they can attend the 2023 regional competition for the first time since the initiation of Eco-marathon in Hisar.
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