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The forces required to control a car while cornering come from 4 small contact patches between the tire and road. Maximizing the average speed through the turn is almost entirely dependent upon the lateral force developed at these four points by the tires. Historically, these forces have not been measured directly, but secondary results such as lateral acceleration have been measured as an indicator of the total lateral force on the vehicle. In addition, tire characteristics have been measured from steady state measurements collected on a Force and Moment machine. Halliday Technologies Inc. has developed the Grip Evaluation and Management device, GEM, with which the lateral force developed by each tire mounted on a vehicle can be measured directly and recorded dynamically. The GEM device is patented in the USA and patents are pending in more than 20 other countries. This paper describes the operation of the GEM device, and presents some of the data collected to date.

The aim of this paper is to document a three year process of product development of the Formula Lightningtm electric race car constructed at the Ohio State University. Today interest in electric vehicles (EV's) is growing, due to the technological advances in recent years, but also in part due to recent legislation which mandates the introduction of ‘zero emission vehicles’ in California before the end of the century. The definition of ‘zero emission vehicle’ is: a vehicle which does not emit any pollutants during operation. Technologically, the only near term vehicle which meets this definition is an EV. One of the most difficult problems of electric racing is that the usable energy in a given set of batteries is not as easily determined as the amount of fuel in a tank. Also, the motor controllers may limit power output as battery voltage drops, further decreasing the amount of usable energy in a battery set.