The DUT11 team will drive a Volkswagen Caddy until the end of August. The TMC group donated financials for this car. This in combination with a good deal from Haaglanden Lease, the team has a very convenient way of transporting different parts and the new electric car; the DUT11. Off course the image of the car is also very important, for this reason we featured the car with a beautiful livery putt on the car by PK Plus. During the testing phase of the DUT11 we will use this car in combination with our trailer to transport the car as safe as possible. We want to thank TMC group, Haaglanden Lease and PK Plus for helping us out with the transportation of the team!

Just like last years, our electronics department is supported by NXP Semiconductors. For the self-designed printed circuit boards we use several components which are supplied by NXP. The most important one is probably the LPC1769 ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller which contains all software. We use this microprocessor on our electronic control unit to control the motor controllers, monitor the safety systems and for the data-acquisition. The printed circuit boards in the dashboard and the steering wheel which are used for the interface with the driver also contain this microprocessor. Communication between the microprocessors is done through the CAN-bus. Therefore we use TJA1051T/3 CAN Transceivers.

Our biggest self-designed printed circuit board, the mainboard of the electronic control unit, can be assembled by NXP. This saves us a lot of money and time so we can focus ourselves 100% on designing and assembling the other printed circuit boards. Last week we received our assembled mainboard from NXP, and as can be seen on the picture everything is attached perfectly straight. We could never have reached this result by hand, and therefore we would like to thank NXP for their help!

Especially in times like these we are very thankful to all the sponsors of our team who despite the financial climate keep on supporting the team. A special thanks goes to our largest and most loyal sponsors, therefore we’ve decided to arrange a special sponsor day. On the sixth of March a delegation of these sponsors evaded the notorious Randstad traffic jams (and some didn’t, but arrived later on anyway).

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ZF, a sponsor of our team, who also sponsors the Formula Student Germany event (FSG) decided to arrange an award ceremony for the team with the best design during FSG sponsored by ZF (Stuttgart) and the best ZF sponsored team at FSG. Because the DUT08 car was sponsored by ZF and won FSG, the team soon received an invitation to come pick up their prize at ZF’s R&D institute all the way in Friedrichshaven.

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