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The Rotary Racer carThe aims of the IMechE Greenpower initiative is to promote engineering and technology as exciting careers, to those aged 9-21. The concept is for teams of secondary school pupils, their parents and teachers to design, build, develop and race highly efficient "green" electric racing cars. The pupils are exposed to many facets of engineering and other disciplines in doing this.
Beam Ltd has been involved with the local Chipping Sodbury school since 2006 in helping to develop a highly efficient, electric racing vehicle. Our main endeavour has been to promote engineering, especially electronics and software engineering, to the schools pupils by showing them good engineering principles and getting them involved as much as possible in the research, design and development of a real product. In so doing we have also learnt a lot more about efficient low energy systems !
The 2009 developed car, Rotary Racer 8, is the Greenpower national champion 2009. It achieved 120 miles in 4 hours using 4 car batteries as a power source. Its inequivalent petrol consumption would have been approximately: 2132 MPG


Some of the work we have been involved in includes:
Late WorkPCB workOne of the most difficult part of this has been getting the pupils involved as much as possible.  However, in conjunction with the parents and teachers at the school I think the team has done well at this. The pupils have given a number of presentations at different events and their knowledge and maturity has shone through. As well as all of this the car the team developed in 2009 won three races and was second in another and became the national Greenpower champions by winning at the national final at Goodwood race circuit.


LinksGoodwood race