UBC engineering students raced to recover energy wasted when vehicles grind to a halt in a competition Thursday at the Fred Kaiser Building.


As part of a second-year course led by mechanical engineering instructor Peter Ostafichuk, students worked in teams for the past four weeks to design and construct model vehicles that incorporate regenerative brakes, which recovers, stores, and reuses energy that would otherwise be lost when bringing the vehicle to a stop.


Regenerative brakes are currently outfitted in hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius and are estimated to recover 20-50 per cent of the energy wasted when braking.


Model cars were released from the top of an elevated test course and must use energy recovered from braking at the bottom of the slope to complete the rest of the racetrack. Winners were also judged on their ability to travel efficiently over long distances, to stop reliably and to use regenerative braking to propel the vehicle after stopping.