Paper #1 Maribeth Suganuma

Cars Go Vroom Vroom!

January 28, 2025 - Maribeth Suganuma

There are so many success stories of scholars becoming masters in their field. Some prime examples are Steven Hawkings, Sheldon Cooper, and Marie Curie. These are people the majority of the country that study in their industry look up to. Even made up characters are looked up to. When I think of mastering a field, the thing that comes to mind is understanding the entire field. The goal is to become an omnipotent being in automotive engineering, that person everyone looks up to. I am going to be that guy who creates the next innovative, transformative technology.


Since I was a child, drawing funny concepts of cars and dreaming of what the next car trends will look like is something I did staring out the car window. Now that I am entered in a race car design competition, I finally got the chance to bring my scientific studies and creativity together.


A splitter in the front of the car reduces the amount of air that gets beneath the car. This creates a type of high and low pressure system around the car that pushes the car onto the ground. Race cars have a problem with losing traction to the ground when they are going very fast. It’s like they want to fly away into the aerospace industry.


Finally being able to apply the knowledge learned in class to a non-class related project brightened the prospect of combining my interests. The fluid dynamics class where the concepts to even understand how a splitter works was a genuinely enjoyable class. So, further research had to be conducted.


After reading, “Car Aerodynamics Basics and How To Design Tips” the conclusion recommended further reading. This got me riled up about what else is there to learn like, how do these design features work together, what other aspects of design should I be thinking about, where can I learn more about other aspects of Aerodynamics? There is so much more to learn about the automotive design industry than originally thought. 


Trying to get a grasp of everything that needs to be learned, I turn to trusty google, “How to Draw Cars?” The How to Draw Cars article ’Automotive Designer or Mechanical Engineer? Which is Right For me?’ by Dhanraj stated in 2018 that one needs “to spend thousands of hours drawing to master the skills needed to draw cars at the professional level.” A loud uncontrollable boisterous laugh left my mouth while reading this. The entirety of my college life is spent learning mechanical engineering, what am I doing wasting my time?


It got me thinking about my professor’s quote from an interview he conducted in 1994 of Philip Anderson, a theoretical physicist, “When one understands everything, one has gone crazy.” I am definitely going crazy if I want to learn both automotive and mechanical engineering at the same time. Scared doesn’t even come close to the word describing how it feels to pursue my dream.


Many websites such as Autodesk foresee electric cars as the future. My goal has always been to be the forward thinker in solar powered vehicles, but Maks Giodano from the Autodesk Article, ‘Driving the future: 10 automotive industry trends and predictions’ says “‘It’s totally okay to say ‘no’ to a trend.’” Markkus Rovito, the author of the same Autodesk article stated in 2024 “The following automotive industry trends may not dictate how the future will look, but if automotive firms choose to deny them, they should choose wisely.” The context was definitely alluding to the movement towards the continued use of fossil fuels, but for me it’s about how solar power cars aren't the way many companies are going. This is why it’s so important to increase my knowledge and awareness in the field. 


For me, the need to find the “complete, consistent and unified theory of the physical interactions which would describe all possible observations” (Is the End In Sight for Theoretical Physics? Steven Hawking) is the binding force that will glue my mechanical and art skills together. With all this time spent on learning more about my field automotive engineering, it is beyond a doubt worth the insanity and possibility of artificial intelligence taking my job soon. Even Steven Hawking thinks so in his article, ‘Is the End in SIght for Theoretical Physics?’ “the end is in sight for theoretical physicists, if not for theoretical physics.”


Am I still excited? Yea. Am I scared/excited? Definitely! Is it worth it? Indubitably. 


Bibliography

“Car Aerodynamics Basics and How-To Design Tips.” Build Your Own Race Car! https://www.buildyourownracecar.com/race-car-aerodynamics-basics-and-design/4/.


Dhanraj. “Automotive Designer or Mechanical Engineer? Which is Right For Me?” How To Draw Cars. 2018. https://howtodrawcars.net/automotive-designer-or-mechanical-engineer/.


Hawking, Stephen. “Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?” The Institute of Physics Physics Bulletin Volume 32. 1961. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9112/32/1/024.


Horgan, John. “The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience.” Cross Check. August 13, 2023. https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/the-delusion-of-scientific-omniscience.


Rovito, Markkus. “Driving the future: 10 automotive industry trends and predictions” Autodesk. August 13, 2024. https://www.autodesk.com/design-make/articles/automotive-industry-trends#:~:text=Trends%20include%20electrification%2C%20the%20increasing,%2C%20machine%20learning%2C%20and%20sustainability.







 

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