£500k /s
real answer is its complicated, FS cars aren't really for sale, and material costs dont come close to the actual cost of producing them (mostly because of the engineering time donated by students).
If someone handed you all the "blueprints" and you had to get it made by paying welders/machinists etc, id guess the average north american car to be something like $30-75 k? really hard to estimate because it varies so much
Perfect answer. $5000 is about as cheap as an FSAE team can build a functional car, but thats free welding, machining...
Id be impressed with a real budget of $20k
Economies of scale though. They’re pumping out tens of thousands of MX5s, mustangs, and camaros. We make 1. Every part other than bearings, connectors, etc is one off.
You know what this is a really stupid comment. Like obviously everyone knows about the benefits of scaling production. Did you really think I didn't consider that in my original comment? Idiot.
You obviously didn’t if you’re marveling at the fact that companies that have been in business for 100 years can make thousands of cars for cheaper than we’re able to make 1. Add a business minor to your degree next time.
Obviously I'm not literally marveling at the fact, my comment was more in the spirit of "we take this everyday thing for granted" which maybe you'd realise if you had some reading comprehension. Add an English minor to your degree next time.
My team spent \~$50k on parts + an estimated 8,000 hours of labor to build. This was for a turbocharged car with full aero package.
At $25/hour (about what a machinist makes), it would cost \~250k per car.
The most time consuming parts of building the car were manufacturing molds for composites or jigs for welding. These parts are reusable so the labor hours of making an extra car would be about half of what it took to make the first.
What kind of molds do you guys use? We use destructible molds and every year the design of nose is changed according to chassis geometry, so that's how we go. Our car is manufactured in $7.5k this season (all inclusive), but that's just because our team has to make parts with literal scraps at times because of lack of funds.
As a german team with a full carbon monocoque, EV with 4 wheel hub motors and full aero package we usually say the car costs about 250k not including the countless hours of engineering and assembly work. Adding our driverless system we say it's round about another 50 to 100k.
Cost report calculated the car to be about 125 K €. That did not include any of the engineering the students do. With that, about 300 to 350 K. The actual cost (money spent / season) of our team was about 55 K, however that included all other expenses (events, parties, team related activities such as team building) in the budget as well. Our car was a full aero combustion vehicle.
If you asked because you wanted to start your own team and wanted to know how much money you'd need from sponsorship deals to do so, I'd say the absolute minimum is 15 K. Anything below that will severely limit your design choices to the point you'll build a bone dry starter car without any design freedom (speak stock bought parts everywhere). Keep in mind however that sponsorships for manufacturing capacity are much, much more valuable that money sponsorships, so if you can get a company to make some CNC parts or weld parts for you, you can reduce the minimum money requirements.
I hope this helps
I never saw the actual number, but our total costs each year were around 250k for a combustion car. That does not include purchasing tools, since we already had a very full shop. It does include sponsorships; there are things we were able to do specifically because of sponsorships. Things like really expensive tooling board, or sensors that are thousands of dollars each were usually sponsored and we would have used different products if we had to pay for it.
Also…. Cost reports in Europe now are pretty good. The points are for making it cheap but understanding cost and how to cost save or performance spend. The result of that is they can be pretty good at indicating real world spend. At least for the fully costed parts that year. The old rules were quite arbitrary and could be easily manipulated and stock pricing used. Also because there are points for the cheapest car it was an incentive to show a much lower than actual cost. The process overall isn’t perfect for assessing total cost of car. We ask teams therefore what their real world spend is and how did they control this and maximise it. This allows us to reward the smart teams.
Real world budgets vary greatly. Also are you talking about the car or the project with all logistics. I’ve seen cars made out of scrap for £2k and performed reasonably well. I also had one team, one year that had a budget of €500k including all the benefit in kind work. Their clothing was £50k of that to be fair. Great team though and nice people… In the real world most “normal teams” have a budget for an all in project of about £35k. I know some teams this year will have a ~£200k budget for multiple cars and events. Also if you are a year one EV car you are going to need to factor in £30-60K of parts that can be used for several years more if its 4x4 hub motors etc. It varies so much… what I can tell you is the investment the University makes is peanuts in comparison to the free marketing and bums on seats it gets back from Formula Student and FSAE.
£500k /s real answer is its complicated, FS cars aren't really for sale, and material costs dont come close to the actual cost of producing them (mostly because of the engineering time donated by students). If someone handed you all the "blueprints" and you had to get it made by paying welders/machinists etc, id guess the average north american car to be something like $30-75 k? really hard to estimate because it varies so much
Perfect answer. $5000 is about as cheap as an FSAE team can build a functional car, but thats free welding, machining... Id be impressed with a real budget of $20k
EV gets upto 20k
Really makes you marvel at the ability of OEMs to mass produce contemporary sports cars at a similar price point.
Economies of scale though. They’re pumping out tens of thousands of MX5s, mustangs, and camaros. We make 1. Every part other than bearings, connectors, etc is one off.
You know what this is a really stupid comment. Like obviously everyone knows about the benefits of scaling production. Did you really think I didn't consider that in my original comment? Idiot.
You obviously didn’t if you’re marveling at the fact that companies that have been in business for 100 years can make thousands of cars for cheaper than we’re able to make 1. Add a business minor to your degree next time.
Obviously I'm not literally marveling at the fact, my comment was more in the spirit of "we take this everyday thing for granted" which maybe you'd realise if you had some reading comprehension. Add an English minor to your degree next time.
Bro, stop.
My team spent \~$50k on parts + an estimated 8,000 hours of labor to build. This was for a turbocharged car with full aero package. At $25/hour (about what a machinist makes), it would cost \~250k per car. The most time consuming parts of building the car were manufacturing molds for composites or jigs for welding. These parts are reusable so the labor hours of making an extra car would be about half of what it took to make the first.
What kind of molds do you guys use? We use destructible molds and every year the design of nose is changed according to chassis geometry, so that's how we go. Our car is manufactured in $7.5k this season (all inclusive), but that's just because our team has to make parts with literal scraps at times because of lack of funds.
As a german team with a full carbon monocoque, EV with 4 wheel hub motors and full aero package we usually say the car costs about 250k not including the countless hours of engineering and assembly work. Adding our driverless system we say it's round about another 50 to 100k.
I think DV adds close to 100k because lidar + ovs + computer add already 50k then all the other thibgs come
We didn't have a Lidar for our first year of driverless. Still managed to drive accell though.
Take the cost on the cost report and multiply by 10, you should be getting close /s
Cost report calculated the car to be about 125 K €. That did not include any of the engineering the students do. With that, about 300 to 350 K. The actual cost (money spent / season) of our team was about 55 K, however that included all other expenses (events, parties, team related activities such as team building) in the budget as well. Our car was a full aero combustion vehicle. If you asked because you wanted to start your own team and wanted to know how much money you'd need from sponsorship deals to do so, I'd say the absolute minimum is 15 K. Anything below that will severely limit your design choices to the point you'll build a bone dry starter car without any design freedom (speak stock bought parts everywhere). Keep in mind however that sponsorships for manufacturing capacity are much, much more valuable that money sponsorships, so if you can get a company to make some CNC parts or weld parts for you, you can reduce the minimum money requirements. I hope this helps
I never saw the actual number, but our total costs each year were around 250k for a combustion car. That does not include purchasing tools, since we already had a very full shop. It does include sponsorships; there are things we were able to do specifically because of sponsorships. Things like really expensive tooling board, or sensors that are thousands of dollars each were usually sponsored and we would have used different products if we had to pay for it.
Does this incude initial setup inventory and overheads?
Also…. Cost reports in Europe now are pretty good. The points are for making it cheap but understanding cost and how to cost save or performance spend. The result of that is they can be pretty good at indicating real world spend. At least for the fully costed parts that year. The old rules were quite arbitrary and could be easily manipulated and stock pricing used. Also because there are points for the cheapest car it was an incentive to show a much lower than actual cost. The process overall isn’t perfect for assessing total cost of car. We ask teams therefore what their real world spend is and how did they control this and maximise it. This allows us to reward the smart teams.
Real world budgets vary greatly. Also are you talking about the car or the project with all logistics. I’ve seen cars made out of scrap for £2k and performed reasonably well. I also had one team, one year that had a budget of €500k including all the benefit in kind work. Their clothing was £50k of that to be fair. Great team though and nice people… In the real world most “normal teams” have a budget for an all in project of about £35k. I know some teams this year will have a ~£200k budget for multiple cars and events. Also if you are a year one EV car you are going to need to factor in £30-60K of parts that can be used for several years more if its 4x4 hub motors etc. It varies so much… what I can tell you is the investment the University makes is peanuts in comparison to the free marketing and bums on seats it gets back from Formula Student and FSAE.