Speed, Skill, and Success: PARA's Journey to Victory
PARA, PNU's self-made car club, shined at the E-Mobility Competition, earning two awards and showcasing their resilience and meticulousness.
Pusan National University (PNU)’s self-made car club, “PARA,” won two awards at the E-Mobility Competition, a national event where university students compete in speed and technology using electric vehicles they built themselves.
On November 15th, PARA announced that it had won awards in two categories—Excellence in Technology (Grand Prize) and the EV category (Bronze)—at the “2024 Smart e-Mobility Competition for University Students,” held from October 4th to 6th at the Korea Automotive Technology Institute’s e-Mobility Research Center in Yeonggwang-gun, Jeollanam-do. The competition, which began in 2017, is one of Korea’s premier events for university students interested in building self-made cars. PARA, which has participated every year since 2019, took home an award for the first time in six years.
Co-hosted by Yeonggwang-gun and the Korea Society of Automotive Engineers, the competition drew heated participation from 68 teams representing 51 universities nationwide, including Hanyang University and Sungkyunkwan University, with a total of approximately 1,900 participants. The event featured three categories: the EV category for electric vehicle races, the Technology category for applied automotive technology, and the Presentation category for vehicle design.
This year, PARA developed and applied the PCDAS (PARA Car Data Acquisition System), a system for remotely acquiring vehicle status and driving data, to its competition vehicle, winning the “Technology” category. This system was created to overcome a shortcoming from 2023, where the team was unable to accurately monitor battery levels, narrowly missing an award by just one rank. Kim Gi-Min (Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 19), in charge of PARA’s publicity, expressed his excitement, saying, “From winter break onward, we gathered daily with nothing but passion, putting our all into the design and production of the vehicle. Seeing our hard work pay off is incredibly rewarding.”
In the EV category where the overall ranking is determined by the combined scores from four events, the team’s first-place finish in the “Endurance Race” was a decisive factor in their success. The EV category competition’s overall ranking is determined by the Acceleration Race, the Slalom Race (weaving through cones placed at intervals), the Performance Race, and the Endurance Race, which involves completing more laps than the Performance Race. PARA secured first place in the Endurance Race, finishing first at the final line, and despite only scoring basic points in the other three events, they achieved an overall 6th place.
Kim Ye-Nam (Dept. of Organic Material Science and Engineering, 21), the competition’s sole female driver, said, “I felt intimidated knowing I was the only female driver in the finals, but I raced with the sense of responsibility not to waste the efforts of my teammates, who had worked hard for an entire year. I’m incredibly grateful to my team for trusting and choosing me during this critical moment when we needed to overcome last year’s disappointment.”
Highlights from PARA’s championship journey are available on the “Channel PNU” website and YouTube channel in the special feature, “Ready Youth Season 2.”
Reporter Hwang Ju-Won
Translated by Thadar-Soe