Intership

After what was an incredible year at Jaguar Land Rover the reality of coming back to university after doing a placement year is not that great. If I was to recommend a placement year to someone that I would say go for it. Getting a year-long placement in the industry is a great opportunity to broaden experience, knowledge, get an idea of what it is like working for company as a full-time employee but mainly to meet new people with the same area of interest (I.e. in my case engineering). From my own experience I found transfer from University life to work life much easier than now the transfer from work life back to university life. Even though one might be able to get a lay in during the week and get up after 7am say on Wednesday, having a routine of getting up early in the morning and then going to bed relatively early in the evening as one must get up again and go to work worked really well for me. Two things I took away from my placement year that will help me in getting through my final year at the university is time management skills and ability to manage multiple priorities at the same time. Even though I had an experience of managing multiple assignment at the same time at the university it is not quite the same as managing or participating in multiple projects in the industry at the same time. My feeling is that anyone who is considering doing a placement year it is obviously great for the industry-based experience, that is for sure but another aspect of looking at doing a year in industry could be to develop transferable skills which are very valued by employers and might help daily.

Lukáš Mácha

05. 12. 2019

3 minuty čtení

Scholarship reciever for university students

As I already mentioned I am currently doing my final year at the University of Derby. I feel a need to talk about Final Year Project as that is what all the final years student talk about. The statement was simple, pick something you can research (something there has been a great body of literature written about), analyse it and fill the gaps. Researching motorsport industry and trying to find gaps felt like a heck of a challenge but fortunately, there is one specific topic that has been getting a lot of attention and is a transferable development problem for both, motorsport and automotive industry: hybrid electric vehicles. Little bit of history is given below.

Electric hybrid vehicles date back to 1900 when Ferdinand Porsche introduced the Lohner Porsche. First ever hybrid electric vehicle that could run from battery or from 2.5hp Daimler engine. According to Motorsport Magazine the first hybrid electric vehicle motorsport entry was in the 1998 Le Mans, the Panoz Q9. Same source further adds that Formula 1 introduced the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) as a mean of hybrid power in 2009 but year classed as a breakthrough of hybrid technology in motorsport was 2012. The year when hybrid technology was deployed in long-distance racing series Le Mans by Audi and Toyota LMP1 cars.

Based on my summer placement at SKODA Motorsport I have agreed with my line manager to work on hybrid powertrain development for World Rallye Championship 2 vehicle. The 2022 regulations for World Rally Championship are promising introduction of hybrid technologies so my work will serve as a stepping stone to ease the burden for engineers at SKODA shall the FIA decide to introduce hybrid technology for WRC 2 as well.

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