A lot has happened in the past few years. When everyone was adjusting to the new normal due to Covid, NITKRacing saw an opportunity up for grabs – going all-electric. This was when we had just finished our on-site combustion event in January 2020 and had seen various electric vehicle teams. That year we excelled at the business plan and were inches away from being one of the few teams who would see the podiums. We did not have a great overall rank. Still, We learned a lot, and it was the insistence on documentation from our seniors that helped us evolve. The following season, we stood 7th overall. This was the biggest jump in rank by any Formula Student team just because we had planned every detail and involved our team alumni all the way from the batch of 2010. This was when we realized that we, as students, highly undervalue NITK’s network and name in the industry, specifically the emotional connection that the alumni share with us. We had perfectly exploited this opportunity and were surprised at how many people were willing to help.
Parallelly, we developed a separate team to design the electric vehicle and take part in concept design events to build our technical expertise. Finally, in 2021, we bagged four major awards – 1st in Software at FSEV, 2nd in Business Plan at Formula Bharat Virtuals, and 4th overall and in engineering design at Formula Bharat. We can confidently say that NITK has one of India’s best Formula Student teams, at par with premier institutes like IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT Kanpur. All of which results from constant hard work and the striving for innovation
After coming back to college, we have started our grind in the real world. We are currently manufacturing NITK’s first electric race car, which will be made entirely by students from the drawing board into real life. The world is moving towards sustainable mobility. We take pride in doing our part towards it – nurturing talent to join the EV industry in India. If you are roaming around campus and happen to cross the welding lab, we will probably be working on the car – cutting some metal and soldering circuits because we are NITKRacing, and we LIVE TO RACE.
NITKRacing is the Formula Student team of NITK, Surathkal.
