Newsletter of April 2022

 

We revealed our new superbikes this month! During this event we presented the new Apex-RS and Delta-XE to our partners, familiy and friends! We can finally share the new liveries and photo's with you!

Both the Apex-RS and the Delta-XE have the same new livery to show that they have race side by side this racing season!

With our first race around the corner, we need to be sure that our superbikes are ready. Therefore we have been testing both the Apex-RS and the Delta-XE as much as we possibly could.

One of the places we used for testing was the E-Circuit in Emmen. We want to thank Powerfiled Nederland for letting us drive on their circuit to test the superbikes.

Previous weekend we attended our first race at the Varsselring! It was an amazing experience for both the superbikes and the team. We've learned a lot during this weekend and achieved many things. The Delta performed very well and set multiple lap times! If you want to know everything that happened during this raceweekend you can read our blog on our website or by clicking here: https://electricsuperbiketwente.nl/varsselring/ 

Here you can see our race calender!

Xelvin is a secondment agency specialized in the recruitment of technical personnel. They make sure to place the technical professional in the right position. Xelvin has also helped many international people who wish to settle in the Netherlands. Next to doing this, Xelvin also offers training programs in order to develop yourself personally and professionally. Xelvin is also able to employ on a project basis. This way, they make it possible to find a company that fits you by doing project with different employers. Xelvin supports us financially.
 

SKF is a company specialized in the development, design and manufacture of bearings, seals and lubrication systems. They provide us with bearings for the superbikes and in case we need any information or help, they provide us with an application engineer who collaborates with us to find the right design for parts. SKF is a very well known company in the world of reliable rotating equipment. Next to these technologies, SKF also provides machine health assessment, engineering and remanufacturing services.
 

The focus of this month for the Chassis team was on testing both the bikes on the tracks. We started with the DELTA-XE. On the we were able to test our motorcycle at the E-circuit in Emmen. Although the DELTA-XE was not driving at its full potential, it was still thrilling to see it ride laps around the circuit. The day went according to plan, but it also showed us where to further improve on. This test day was shortly followed by our also successful motor reveal, where we presented to our sponsors, student teams, family and friends what we had achieved so far and what still to come.  

Only one day after leaving the Shelter for our motor reveal, we hit the tarmac again at the E-circuit to test the DELTA-XE further and see if we had solved the before found challenges and to ensure we were ready for our first race.   

The climax of this month was last weekend when we attended our very first race at the Varsselring. The day after were the qualifications. We participated in the 2-stroke class and after a little hick-up with the APEX-RS leaving our paddocks, both bikes were at the start grid. APEX-RS finished its lap in the first round of qualifications, but was unfortunately forced to head into the pitlane due to an overheated motor controller. DELTA-XE was not able to complete one lap in the first qualifications due to an error in the software. Later in the afternoon the second round of qualifications was held and again both bikes were present at the starting grid. Before the qualifications we agreed to call both bikes in for check-up after one lap. When the APEX-RS was called in, all seemed fine. Yet when our rider Jorn Hamberg left the pitlane, the APEX-RS ceased to ride just 100 meters shy of the end of the pitlane. It was later discovered that this was caused by a reduced voltage flow to the low voltage battery. The DELTA-XE on the other hand was able to complete 4 more laps. The next day was race day. Throughout the night we were tried to fix the problems that surfaced during the qualifications. Sadly, despite our efforts we were not able to solve the issues with the APEX-RS and we decided to not race with the bike in the finals. The following morning only the DELTA-XE left our paddocks for the warm-up lap of the day. During this warm-up an issue with the brake system was discovered. Along some friendly helpers we tried to solve the issue, but the few hours between the warm-up laps and the race proved to be too short and we were not finished in time for the race. Although we could not compete in the race, we learned a lot from the experience and we are proud that we could participate in the qualifications and see our motorcycles race alongside their petrol counterparts.

April was in the light of preparing everything for our first official race at the Varsselring. Before we could go racing, we had to check of several boxes yet. Some of these boxes were: testing the bike on low and high velocity on track. Therefore we visited the e-circuit of Emmen. With the Delta XE, we had two successful days of testing. The Apex RS however, was not ready in time for testing. Due to a few minor mistakes in the code, it seemed as if our device to upload code to the ECU had broken, which we could not replace in time. Luckily for us, the ECU debugger was not broken, which meant we could test the bike a few days later  on the parking lot of the University of Twente.   

Preparing for all the testing, cost us a lot of time. For every testing day, the bikes must be fully charged, the battery packs balanced if required, low voltage batteries must be charged, and everything must be checked. Letting this pass smoothly is quite the challenge: the chassis sub-team also requires its time with the bike, and many other, non-technical, tasks must be completed as well.  

A nice distraction from the hustle was our seminar with Würth-Elektronik. Myron and Alex visited us to discuss the basics of EMC (Electro Magnetic Compatibility), and the application of EMC on our superbikes. We were left with a lot of input and things to think about.