Case Study: TUfast Eco Team achieves world-record energy efficiency and ultra-light vehicles with Altair HyperWorks

Lighter, farther, faster, greener: TUfast Eco team drives to success with HyperWorks

The TUfast Eco Team from the Technical University Munich is a student racing group focused on designing ultra-efficient electric vehicles for competitions like the Shell Eco-marathon. Facing the annual challenge of building a completely new, lighter vehicle each year and aiming to break efficiency records, the team leveraged Altair’s HyperWorks CAE suite (including HyperMesh, OptiStruct and HyperView) to drive simulation-led lightweight and composite design.

Altair supported TUfast Eco Team with topology and composite optimization workflows in HyperWorks, applying a three-step composite sizing and shuffling approach plus OptiStruct-based structural and suspension optimizations. The results were dramatic: eLi15 was the lightest vehicle in the 2015 Shell Eco-marathon, the team won the battery category, design and multiple Off‑Track awards, and continued refinements yielded a 24 kg vehicle in 2016 and a 25% front-suspension weight reduction—culminating in an official world record of 1,232 km/kWh (≈10,965 km per liter). Altair’s tools and support were credited as key to these measurable gains.

TUfast Eco Team

Daniel Hornung

Division Manager Suspension & Front-Axis eLi16