SAE International's Collegiate Design Series (CDS) competitions take students beyond textbook theory by enabling them to design, build, and test the performance of a real vehicle and then compete with other students from around the globe in exciting and intense competitions. All CDS competitions prepare undergraduate and graduate engineering students in a variety of disciplines for future employment in mobility-related industries by challenging them with a hands-on, team engineering experience that also requires budgeting, communication, project management, and resource management skills. Students also gain valuable exposure with recruiters from leading companies in the mobility industry to help land their first engineering job after graduation.
The SAE Aero Design competition is a real‐world design challenge designed to compress a typical aircraft development program into one calendar year, taking participants through the system engineering process of breaking down requirements. It exposes participants to the nuances of conceptual design, manufacturing, system integration/test, and sell‐off through demonstration.
This newly established, three-year autonomous vehicle competition, headline sponsored by SAE International and General Motors, tasks students to develop and demonstrate a full autonomous driving passenger vehicle. The technical goal of the competition is to navigate an urban driving course in an automated driving mode as described by SAE Standard (J3016) Level 4 definition by year three.
In Baja SAE, engineering students are tasked with designing and building a single-seat, all-terrain sporting vehicle that is to be a prototype for a reliable, maintainable, ergonomic, and economic production vehicle that serves a recreational user market. The students must function as a team to design, engineer, build, test, promote, and compete with a vehicle within the limits of the rules.
The SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge provides participants with the opportunity to enhance their engineering design and project management skills by re-engineering an existing snowmobile to reduce emissions and noise. Participants’ modified snowmobiles compete in a variety of events, including emissions, noise, fuel economy/endurance, acceleration, handling, static display, cold start, and design.
Formula Hybrid Competition is an interdisciplinary design and engineering challenge for undergraduate and graduate university students. They must collaboratively design and build a formula-style electric or plug-in hybrid racecar and compete in a series of events. This educational competition emphasizes drivetrain innovation and fuel efficiency in a high-performance application.
The Formula SAE series competitions challenge teams of university undergraduate and graduate students to conceive, design, fabricate, develop, and compete with small, formula-style vehicles. The competitions give teams the chance to demonstrate and prove both their creativity and engineering skills in comparison to teams from other universities around the world.
Introduced in 2013, Formula SAE Electric allows the development of fully electric vehicles within the Formula SAE framework. Teams use vehicles powered only by electrical motors and compete in static and dynamic events such as design, presentation, cost, acceleration, skidpad, autocross, endurance, and efficiency.
The engineering design goal of SAE Supermileage is to develop and construct a single-person, fuel-efficient vehicle that complies with the competition rules. The vehicles will run a specified course to obtain the highest combined km/L (mpg) rating; students will be exposed to a design segment consisting of a written report and verbal presentation.