Flipping the Switch: Triton Racing Goes Electric

After nearly 30 years of designing and building a formula race car powered by an internal combustion engine for the annual Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) collegiate competition, the Triton Racing student team at the University of California San Diego flipped a switch in 2023 and went electric. For the first time, the team was able to bring a functioning formula race car running on its own battery power that they designed and built, to the Formula SAE Electric competition this June, representing three years of intense learning and work.

If you’re picturing the team sourcing a battery off-the-shelf and slapping it into their existing car chassis — guess again. These undergraduate students from engineering and computer science majors across the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering sourced only the battery cell subpacks off the shelf — they built all the rest of the battery components, and designed the 350 Volt battery themselves. Then, they had to redesign the entire car chassis to meet the requirements of an electric vehicle.

“My first year on the team, in 2023, we attempted to almost retrofit a combustion chassis with a battery and motor, and obviously that went really poorly. It was a mess,” said Rohan Kannan, a nanoengineering student and technical project manager for Triton Racing. “We found that you can't just take any chassis and put components in it and make it work. It needs to be designed very intentionally to fit a large rectangular battery and then the motor and differential components as well. A combustion chassis typically has a very small rear because the engine can sit outside the frame, but that’s not allowed and is generally unsafe for a high voltage system, it needs to be completely contained within the frame of the chassis, so that required a lot of design work.”

Why go through all this additional work, instead of using their institutional knowledge to continue iterating on internal combustion engine cars as the team has done since 1997?

“One of the big selling points for students to get involved with Triton Racing is getting real world experience working on a project team, and getting that career-relevant engineering experience," said Aidan Fuller, a computer engineering student and president of Triton Racing. “A lot of us are interested in the automotive industry in the future, so mirroring the industry changes and trends toward electric vehicles will better prepare us for future careers.”

Triton Racing alumni have gone on to careers at Tesla Motors, Rivian Automotive, Mercedes-AMG F1, Honda Performance Development, and Hyundai Technical Center, to name just a few.

The engineering experience students get on the team is invaluable, but it’s not the only thing team members glean from being part of this student organization. Jocelyn Wang, a bioengineering student and vice president of Triton Racing, said the skills she learned on the team have helped her immensely, even though her professional goals lie in the medical device industry.

“Joining any sort of project team like Triton Racing will get you the real-world experience that no class or research lab or club can provide,” said Wang. “Being able to work with other people and hone these people skills translates really well into industry, whether that’s the automotive industry, or in my case, the medical device industry. I was able to learn things my first year on the team that I don't think I'd be able to get from anywhere else. Learning, growing and developing as both an engineer and a teammate and a leader.”

The team has come a long way from switching to build electric vehicles in 2023, and finally having a running car to bring to the Formula SAE Electric competition at Michigan International Speedway in June 2026. At the competition, collegiate teams from across the country compete in dynamic events – a 22 kilometer endurance race, a 0-75 miles per hour acceleration test, skippad and autocross – and static events – presentations on design and cost, for example. Triton Racing doubled, and in some cases tripled, their scores on the static events from the 2025 competition, and for the first time in the electric vehicle competition, the team passed one of the six technical inspections required to compete in the dynamic race events.

The goal for next year is straightforward, but not simple: pass all six technical inspections, and finally be able to race their electric vehicle at the competition.

Getting there will take a lot of dedication and perseverance, and probably not much sleep.

“At least on my side, sleep is what gets sacrificed,” said Kannan. “We have to put in the time we need to get the grades we want in class, and then we fill the rest of our time with Triton Racing. Unfortunately it is sometimes our sleep that gets the lowest priority, but luckily this team is really a social outlet for us, too. When we’re in the project room working, we’re talking and having fun.”

“We learn a ton, and develop great friendships,” said Fuller. “It’s a sacrifice - mainly sleep - but it’s absolutely worth it. It is invaluable to get this opportunity to use what you're learning in class and gain really valuable real world experience, often before you even have an internship.”

Part of the funding for this project came from the UC San Diego Green Initiative Fund. The student team is also supported by a wide array of industry sponsors who provide monetary and in-kind support as well as mentorship. Learn more about Triton Racing: https://sae.eng.ucsd.edu/