EVolocity Nationals in Hamilton held at Kartsport on the 24 November.

EVolocity is a program that supports secondary students to design, build and compete in electric vehicles from recycled materials.
School teams build a vehicle (either a bike or with 3+ wheels) powered by a standard 350W electric motor, controller and two 12V gel cells. Innovation is encouraged as students strive to make their vehicle the fastest with the least drag, and able to cope with the demands of a tight street circuit. 

The Innovation categories encourage teams to build in object detection and mitigation features along with the measurement and display of key performance metrics. There are also prizes for those who complete a video diary, advert for EVolocity program and keep a written diary/plan of how their build went, what they did and when, with photographic evidence.

The Mana college EVolocity teams are called Junk Raiders who made a Kart ( Daniel Whiting-Cuncannin, Kayleb Langley ) and Team Blank who made a bike ( Honor Jackson, Rhianne Taura ). Mr Maikali Bulicakau and Ms Vanessa Jackson flew up with us on Saturday morning. We where lucky to receive Airpoints for schools from Air New Zealand when covered our flights. Our mahi for those airpoints meant we had to write stories about our experiences on the trip and take photos and videos. 

We stayed at the Student Village at the University of Waikato, it was huge and had beautiful gardens on the campus, though it was too hot to go for a walk during the day time. We had our own small rooms, they had a built in desk and bed and wardrobe. We were in a pod of 6 rooms which meant we had a shared bathroom and kitchenette between us, we couldn't imagine it being home for a year as it is for some students. There was a common room with a TV and bigger kitchen and places to relax and eat.  We had Honors Dad Andre as our guide, we had dinner at his house and then explored the Hamilton gardens.

Breakfast was at 7:10am in a huge dinning room that looked out onto the lake, it was really peaceful and we had it to ourselves because no-one else was up that early on a Sunday.

It was light rain and cloudy when we got to Kartsport at 7:45 am for scrutineer, there where 60 teams competing this year, the biggest nationals yet. Che from Ingots Metals Porirua, his wife and son drove up with the school trailer and our vehicles and tools we may need for repairs. Che is our mentor and Ingots Porirua is our only sponsor.

We raced in the Drags, Street circuit, Gymkhana and Economy run. Sadly we didn't win a award this time, but we had a great day racing.
We had dinner at the Gardens and then back to the airport for our flight home.

We were glad to be home and back in our own beds. Can't wait until next year to try out fix the things that didn't work well and trial new ideas from what we saw from other teams. We where great ambassadors of #MANAwithMana.