Tucked in a corner on the first floor of Western Washington University’s Ross Engineering Technology Building sits WWU Racing’s V67, a car the team has spent the last two years building to get ready for this June’s Formula Society of Automotive Engineers competition.
The V67 is a fully electric car with an overhauled design made necessary after previous cars failed the technical portion of the FSAE Electric Vehicle competition. This year, their top priority is to get past the technical inspection
To pass, the team needs to complete a series of six tests. The student battery test is the most difficult hurdle to overcome, according to Kaley Zundel, the program lead for FSAE, FSAE Electric and FSAE Workshop.
“The majority of teams registered still fail at passing the first area of inspection of their student-built battery,” Zundel wrote in an email. “In 2025, we only saw 50% teams pass this area. Of those who pass battery inspection, the next largest area of failure would be either rain test or brake test.”
The battery test makes sure the battery is safe and that the battery the team is presenting matches the battery documents they’ve submitted. Once it looks safe to the judges, they have the team charge it and see if the team can monitor the cell voltage and temperatures. There is no one way to make a battery, but the battery should be built in a way so that any member of the team could easily disassemble and reassemble it without issue.
The V67’s leadership team is composed of three directors and nine leads. The three directors are Rye Petter, the project manager, Jacob Spinello, the technical director and Ashley Beauvais, the business director.
Before the V67, the team had generally followed a one-year build cycle for their cars but after the previous teams had failed to pass technical inspection, Petter decided to switch to a two-year cycle to focus on a complete redesign of the car. This allowed the team to create a strong foundation for future cars.
“You have to pass a technical inspection (and) safety inspection,” Petter said. “It's been something this team has struggled to pass for the last four years, since we switched to EV. That's something everyone struggles to pass.”
While Petter is working to build a strong foundation for the car, he also builds a strong foundation for his team through his leadership. He starts every club meeting with a rundown of what is expected of the team that day and encourages members to work even harder to get more done than just what’s on the agenda.
Petter is in charge of overseeing the project, but he doesn’t get to work on the car himself that often, only stepping in every once in a while when needed. As for Spinello, it’s all hands on.
Spinello has worked on every aspect of the car, including the design for the new battery pack. When it comes to their hopes to pass the battery test, Spinello feels very ready, noting that the battery pack is the part of V67 that he is proudest of.
“It's a very elegant design, the switch to pouch cells in the way that they're manufactured compared to others, it's pretty night and day, and super pretty,” Spinello said. “It's a bit of a weird question because it is like, which child do you love the most? All the parts of this car are super impressive. But I would have to give it to that one if I were to pick one child that I love the most.”
Spinello is a fourth-year at Western and has competed before during the V66 build cycle in 2024. He said the rain test is the scariest part of the technical inspection.
“They just turn your car on, energize the high voltage system and then they dump water on it for two minutes, and then they leave,” Spinello said. “They have to let it sit there for two minutes and if anything funky happens at all, you fail.”
Under each team lead, there are teams of members who work on different parts of the car. One of the members Spinello highlighted as particularly important to building the V67 is Kyle Dedrick. Dedrick is a third-year student who said the team has shaped his time at Western.
“A lot of the friends I've made are on this team. My girlfriend is on this team, a lot of my close circles of people that I know and spend time with are on this team,” Dedrick said. “There's a bunch of awesome people on this team. I love spending time with them.”
Dedrick was integral to building the car's nose cone, which is essentially the cover that’s on the front of the car, designing the entire thing in a class he took last quarter, and notes that it is the part of the car that he feels the proudest of.
“Last quarter, I took a class called Intro to Composites,” Dedrick said. “The quarter-long project in that class was to build a mold and make parts off of that mold. The timing worked out so that I could actually make the nose cone for the car through that project.”
Petter has spent the last two years working to ensure the team has a strong sense of chemistry. With a longer-term build cycle, there have been plenty of opportunities to see the team grow.
“It's super gratifying to see the people on your team grow and succeed,” Petter said. “I can now point to anyone in the team and ask them what our goals are and they know it off the top of their head; they live by it.”
The team is headed to the FSAE EV competition in Brooklyn, Michigan, from June 16 through 20, 2026. To stay updated on their progress in the competition, follow their Instagram at @wwuracing.
Chayton Engelson (he/him) is a sports and recreation senior reporter for The Front. He is in his second year at Western and is majoring in news/editorial journalism with a minor in film studies. When he isn’t covering stories, he is usually doing community theater or watching movies. You can reach him at chaytonengelson.thefront@gmail.com.
