Newsletter of February 2020

May 15th we will finally reveal our newest generation electric superbike to the world at Kinepolis Enschede! Be sure to be at this amazing and special event and be among the first to see our year's work in person!

To do something extra for our Front Row and Pole Position partners, we invited them to a try the bike session. Early in the morning the first people were already standing in the cold weather for the first round. However we were happy to see everyone get of the bike full of enthusiasm!

We participated in the international project week of Saxion University of Applied Sciences, for which we came up with a business case. Four groups of six students worked one week on this case producing inspiring and interesting content. It was great to see the enthusiasm of the students with which they tackled the challenges. Maybe we can see some of their work in future teams of EST!

Just like last year we had a lovely night out at the student team gala together with our colleagues of the other student teams in Twente.

De Bedrijvendagen Career Fair was this month and we were present at the stand of our Pole Position partner Aalberts. We got the chance to talk to students looking for a graduation assignment and socialize with the people at Aalberts!

AE Group supports us by designing and manufacturing the electric motor. In the past, they have produced the electric motor of the Liion-GP! Our engineer Lars works closely together with engineers of AE Group to design and produce the most powerful and lightweight electric motor possible! We thank AE Group for their continued support and for the close collaboration!

As the end of February draws near we are heading to our external production deadline. This deadline marks the point at which we want all the components in the making at companies. In order to reach this point a lot of preparation has been done already: materials are bought, first steps like cutting or bending have been done, and small components that we can produce ourselves have been finished.

Now the more complicated steps like milling, turning or welding are done by many of our partners. It has been a great month, from making our first small parts to producing key components of the motorcycle. Examples of these are the aluminium pieces of the electric motor, our frame and swing arm. Next to our own designed parts many standard parts are also arriving by the day.

Next month we will reach an even more important deadline: the production deadline, at this point we need all of the components to be finished. It will be a busy month in which we finally see what we designed in reality. After this point, assembly will start and the whole superbike has to come together.

This month the powertrain was busy with ordering the correct sensors for our bike, building a cable overview for the wiring harness and protocols for assembling the battery pack. Assembling the battery pack is not without a risk and our spearhead this year is to put safety first. Therefore we wrote down step-by-step how the assembly has to be done, what risks are involved every step and how to reduce these risks.

Unfortunately the corona virus also has an impact on our production. The PCBs are manufactured in China and as a result the PCBs are delayed by a few weeks. Luckily due to a good planning of our technical manager, there is room for unforeseen circumstances like these such that it does not cause big problems for the production phase.