Extremely Fuel-Efficient Vehicles
Through their reseller KommaGo, Peplink distributor Frontier BV came in contact with the Eco-runner team Delft. Every year, Eco-Runner Team Delft designs and builds a car to compete in the Shell Eco Marathon. The vehicle consuming the least amount of fuel to complete the track within a set time limit gets to take the trophy home.
Peplink routers made it possible to get real-time information from the vehicle, which in turn made it possible to provide strategic advice based on the data.
“By knowing such as speed, location and diagnostic information they can not only tell the driver to adjust their driving behavior, but it also removes the need to recall what happened during the race when reviewing the data. A reliable, low latency machine-to-machine data connection would thus be highly valuable to us”.
Tom Laeven – Chief Electronics & Powertrain
Based on KommaGo’s advice, the team used two Pepwave MAX BR1 Mini’s for the connection; one for in the vehicle, one for the ‘groundbase’. Although there was Wi-Fi available for all contestants at the groundbase, the connection was unreliable because 200 student teams had to use it. This made the stability of the Pepwave router very valuable.
“On the vehicle side, we used even more of the available features; powering the device in the vehicle was easy as it could be directly connected to the battery, without any devices in-between. Furthermore, the built-in GPS and fleet tracking software, where we can see the vehicle position in real time as well as monitor its speed, saved us a great amount of development time and was used to give the strategy team a visual representation of the location of the car. We are very happy with the solution Peplink could offer us as it proved to be easy, reliable, and time-saving and we will most likely continue to use this setup”.