For the FSAE Michigan June 2022 competition, I took on the role of cost lead—one of the large events at the competition. In order to score highly in cost, teams need to respond to a situation with well researched solutions and arguments presented in an engaging manner. Along with this, teams also have to present 4 redesigned components that would address the aforementioned situation or would in general reduce the cost of the car were it to be mass-produced at a volume of 1000 cars per year. 

For the 2022 competition, we redesigned the seat, engine tabs, wheel centers, and uprights. The main goals were to reduce amount of aluminum stock, reduce the amount of material removed (and machining time as well). This upright would achieve those goals, however, also will almost certainly be heavier than the previous one and therefore is not necessarily better from a performance standpoint.


In this case I was able to reduce the cost by approximately 48% while increasing the weight from 0.44kg to 0.53kg