Aug 22 : The students’ teams of St Joseph Engineering College (SJEC), Mangaluru, brought laurels to the college through their outstanding performances in SAE mBaja and eBaja events. Team SJEC Racing secured overall 23rd rank out of 150 teams and team e-SJEC Racing bagged 8th place among 50 teams.
The annual student All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) design and manufacturing event was conducted completely in online mode for the 2021 season due to the pandemic. mBaja is a combustion engine driven vehicle whereas eBaja is driven with an electric motor.
BAJA SAE INDIA is a student-level competition that has its roots outside India. BAJA primarily focuses on the out-of-classroom-education system, in which engineering students from all over India participate as a team. The goal of each team is to design and build a prototype of a rugged single-seat, an off-road four-wheel vehicle that has to go through multiple tests and then compete in the endurance race. India saw the launch of the event in January 2007 and for the last five years, Mahindra has been the title sponsor for the event.
Team SJEC Racing was incepted in 2016 and since then the team has participated in four seasons of SAE BAJA and secured prominent results. The team secured an overall 32nd rank in the 2020 season and inspired by these performances another bunch of enthusiastic students formed Team e-SJEC Racing in 2019 and have been performing consistently for the last 2 years.
Due to the current situation, BAJA 2021 was conducted virtually via industrial level simulation software IPG CarMaker and both the teams from SJEC achieved promising results.
Notable achievements of SJEC at mBaja included 7th rank in Manoeuvrability, 9th rank in Endurance, 14th rank in Suspension & Traction, 18th rank in CAE Evaluation, 29th rank in Static Report and 23rd rank in Dynamic events whereas eBaja secured 1st place in Endurance, 2nd place in Dynamics, Brakes and Manoeuvrability.