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Electric-powered car race woos youngsters into the engineering world

Renishaw is hoping to race to success in an international event aimed at encouraging young people into a career in engineering.

In the Greenpower event, young people aged nine to 25 design, build and race fully functioning electric cars, forming a link between education and industry.

After racing to success at Rockingham last year, the UK-based Renishaw team is set to compete in the event taking place in Poland this weekend (September 23 and 24), marking the first time that the team has competed internationally.

Greenpower was launched in the UK in 1999 and has since expanded to Spain, China, the USA and Poland. The inaugural Polish Greenpower race was held last September and the event returns for a second year to build on its success.

The Wotton-under-Edge engineering company's team has ranked extremely well in the UK; however the race in Poznan marks its first international event.

The team is taking three of its electric cars, two of which have been extensively reworked since the 2016 season ended and one that is brand new.

The UK team has already built a relationship with a local team from Silesian University, Gliwice, at previous races, with the university having visited Renishaw's UK headquarters.

Tom Lawson, technical apprentice and Greenpower team member at Renishaw, said: "The Poznan race gives us the opportunity to meet new people, learn from other teams and consider different approaches to designing the cars.

"We've won numerous awards for our innovation and have been making incremental improvements to the cars since we first raced. It will be interesting to see what other teams bring to the race. Hopefully we can learn from them and benchmark for the upcoming season.

"Poland boasts an extremely strong automotive industry, which is developing all the time," explained Tomasz Rżysko, general manager at Renishaw Sp. z o.o. in Poland.

"This makes us an ideal location for Greenpower, as it helps to develop technical and engineering skills among young people to further the rapidly advancing industry. Poznan itself is home to automotive manufacturers such a Volkswagen and has a strong technical university, which makes it a natural fit for the race itself."

Renishaw Sp. z o.o was formed in 2002 and its new office in Warsaw was opened in 2014. The subsidiary's 25 employees offers sales and technical support for Renishaw's full product portfolio including additive manufacturing, Raman spectroscopy, metrology and encoders.

Picture caption: a Renishaw Greenpower car practising on the track. Image credit, John Robbens

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