I helped with a student team at my current uni that was building a hydrogen race car. The Formula Student team was just down the hall. Our uni's team was primarily fetishizing optimizations - I heard that they got one aerospace engineering student to spend an entire year on just the curve of the spoiler. While I had nothing to do with the technical stuff, adding enormous batteries and super high pressurized hydrogen tanks on student engineering calculations doesn't really...instill confidence. They got a Dutch former Formula 1 driver to give it a spin, and while he supported the project he was also very adamant that nobody should ever drive it that isn't a safety-trained racecar driver. (It's also not a large go-kart - more like a Lotus Elise size.)It's obvious to anyone who watches closely that the more innovative you are, the more likely you are to encounter problems no one has ever faced before.
One of the greatest insights I experienced was in switching programs from WWU to UW. The WWU car was this thing with That the grad students basically got to design and the rest of us got to "work on." And, okay, innovation, whatever. But then I came down to UW and every year, that class started with steel tubing and spare parts and built a goddamn race car. Did it win? Rarely. Did it compete? Every time. Did it have to fucking work? Every goddamn time. The UW kids learned how to build a fucking car. The WWU kids learned how to work on someone else's car. Sure - you can spend a year on the curve of the spoiler. The WWU kids spent a year on keeping the brakes from peeling out of the wheels. The UW kids spent a year learning how a car goes together.6″ filament wound carbon tube chassis, turbocharged fuel injected CBR600 engine, spool rear end (no differential), and suspension geometry designed to promote jacking to enable rotation with the spool. The car also used 10″ wheels, inside-out front disk brakes, and dual floating inboard rear brake rotors
I found this true when I worked in the fashion (menswear) industry, as well. Graduates from the Art Institute were dippy blonde girls driving daddy's Escalade, who went to school to learn to draw. Badly. These people became wives of Microsoft employees. Graduates from the International Academy of Design and Technology (my school) were able to design amazing one-off garments that broke existing clothing expectations. Couture designers. Graduates from Seattle Central could make any piece of clothing quickly, and fit it perfectly (tailoring). Manufacturing pros. Then, when I ran my own clothing company, I threw away resumes from the Art Institute, and I fawned over the amazing and clever stuff the IADT graduates showed me. But I hired people from Seattle Central. Every single one of them that applied. Because they knew how to handle fabric, they knew garment construction techniques, and they could make things fit real human beings.
Yep, same WWU story here. To make matters worse, the spoiler is the ugliest thing I have ever seen on a vehicle, ever.
