Driving onto the world stage: The Ontario Tech Venture Arrow story

Over the previous two years in Oshawa, Ontario, Ontario Tech College’s Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE) was dwelling to a top-secret and visionary nationwide engineering challenge. Often known as Venture Arrow, the mission was to construct Canada’s first zero-emission idea electrical automobile.  

Canada’s Automotive Components Producers’ Affiliation (APMA) chosen Ontario Tech because the lead tutorial establishment for Section 2 of Venture Arrow, an all-Canadian engineered idea funded by the Federal Financial Improvement Company for Southern Ontario (FedDev). The Arrow’s bold deadline was met, and the APMA’s brainchild made its world debut January 5, 2023 on the Client Electronics Present (CES) in Las Vegas, the world’s probably the most influential tech occasion.

Why Ontario Tech for Venture Arrow?

Ontario Tech attracts the brightest analysis and tutorial minds in areas together with additive manufacturing, automotive engineering, aerodynamics, electrification, vitality storage, battery chemistry and cybersecurity. The college was chosen because the construct associate as a consequence of its world popularity for excellence in vitality, automotive, good mobility and engineering analysis experience. Most of all, Ontario Tech was chosen due to the popularity of its individuals to get issues achieved.

The college was additionally chosen for its exemplary observe document with trade companions and its ACE core analysis and testing facility that options world-class automotive prototype construct capability and a Climatic Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel with distinctive capabilities for idea improvement, together with the capability to simulate excessive chilly and highly effective windstorms. The Arrow improvement by School of Engineering and Utilized Science professors, undergraduate and graduate college students, and engineering technical workers helped put together the Arrow for the complete vary of harsh Canadian climate circumstances.

Venture Arrow progressed from preliminary provider conferences all the best way to half design, fabrication, and full construct on-site within the ACE climactic wind tunnel at Ontario Tech. Whereas at this time’s vehicles are usually constructed on meeting traces, each design and fabrication element of the Arrow, from the choice on kind and placement for each bolt, to the complete set up and construct, was accomplished on campus by a group of consultants and future expertise from the college’s engineering applications. The group collaborated with the APMA’s many companions, together with trade leaders, startups and huge Tier-1 suppliers throughout Canada to contribute and collaborate on Venture Arrow.

Meet the Ontario Tech Venture Arrow group

Ontario Tech led the construct of the Arrow and can conduct the entire aerodynamic testing inside its ACE Core Analysis Facility. Below the management of APMA Chief Engineer Fraser Dunn (recruited from the U.Ok.’s Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd.), and Ontario Tech Assistant Chief Engineer Paula Ambra, the powerhouse group of college researchers, senior engineering consultants, expert trade tradespeople, and engineering college students labored alongside the APMA leads. Venture Arrow exemplifies the college’s dedication to advancing ladies in STEM.

As a part of the ACE technical workers, Ambra is answerable for providing technical and enterprise advisory companies to Ontario-based corporations to help within the testing, validation and prototyping of recent linked and autonomous automobile merchandise and applied sciences and supporting college members’ analysis tasks. Earlier than becoming a member of the ACE group, she held progressive engineering positions throughout the automotive trade, most lately as Engineering Group Supervisor for Decrease Physique Buildings at Common Motors Canada.

A bunch of Ontario Tech college researchers, led by Dr. Ahmad Barari, School of Engineering and Utilized Science (FEAS), labored intently with college students and the ACE engineering group to create vital efficiencies in automobile improvement processes, utilizing rising applied sciences such a digitalization in design, manufacturing, and inspection, multi-physics simulations, and additive manufacturing.”

Venture Arrow additionally created hands-on work and studying alternatives for a gaggle of greater than twenty FEAS college students. Amongst them: 

• Fourth-year Automotive Engineering scholar Andrew Genovese labored on the set up of physique panels, subframes, suspension programs, brake traces, motors, and extra. He was additionally concerned with the manufacturing of components, in addition to the logistics of transport components for the challenge. 
• Fourth-year Mechatronics Engineering scholar Izzy Cossarin was concerned in nearly each component of the Arrow’s improvement, together with writing copy for the automobile’s interface, challenge administration, ordering and co-ordinating the logistics of lots of the automobile parts, and dealing intently with the machine store to fabricate parts for the automobile. 
• Genovese and Cossarin attended the official unveiling of the Arrow at CES.

What the legacy of Venture Arrow means for Ontario Tech

By way of its confirmed and intensive observe document of world-class trade and analysis partnerships, Ontario Tech provides the perfect ecosystem for driving innovation and commercialization.  

With the Arrow being constructed on-site by Ontario Tech’s professional group of engineers, college researchers, and distinctive engineering scholar expertise, this demonstrates ACE as a key options supplier and innovation hub that brings collectively trade and tutorial companions within the vitality and automotive sectors to speed up financial progress.

Ontario Tech’s analysis strengths and priorities related to Venture Arrow 

• Power, utilized bioscience and environmental sustainability
  • Canada’s vitality and environmental future
  • Electrical battery and gasoline cells
• Superior manufacturing and supplies
  • Clever manufacturing and supplies innovation
• Automotive engineering, transportation and electrification programs
  • Autonomous autos and programs

Ontario Tech: A house for improvement of future engineering expertise

• Ontario Tech is creating the trade’s future expertise: The college provides Canada’s solely accredited Automotive Engineering program along with a full suite of engineering applications that may even embody Power Engineering in Fall 2023.
• Ontario Tech is dedicated to giving college students high quality career-developing experiential studying alternatives.
• Aviva Canada’s sponsor position in Venture Arrow offers experiential studying alternatives (e.g. co-ops) for college students in addition to seed funding for highway security and climate-responsive scholar startup corporations at Ontario Tech.

Quotes

“Ontario Tech’s position on this bold endeavor is a trailblazing instance of our distinctive competencies and school and scholar expertise in world-class analysis and engineering tasks. We all know how you can get issues achieved collaboratively at Ontario Tech. Our DNA comprises the perfect ecosystem to drive innovation and commercialization ahead that may higher our planet.”
– Dr. Steven Murphy, President and Vice-Chancellor, Ontario Tech College

“Venture Arrow is an all-Canadian initiative, and we’re very completely happy that APMA partnered with Ontario Tech for its capabilities, each when it comes to the college’s revolutionary ACE Core Analysis Facility, and the eagerness and expertise of our college and college students. It’s a particular feeling to know that we’re making an important contribution to assist revolutionary lab-to-market tasks in our nation within the important combat towards local weather change.”
– Dr. Les Jacobs, Vice-President, Analysis and Innovation, Ontario Tech College

“I’m grateful to have been given this chance to make the most of my automotive background to be a part of such a gifted and hard-working group. To see this imaginative and prescient of a Canadian electrical automobile prototype being designed and constructed proper right here in Canada, with a number of the most unimaginable tutorial expertise, expert trades expertise, provider know-how and like-minded individuals, is really a once-in-a-career alternative.” 
– Paula Ambra, Ontario Tech ACE Venture Arrow Engineering Lead

“Engaged on this challenge has been an unimaginable expertise and I’ve realized a lot. Being hands-on and creating nearly each Arrow element has helped me additional perceive the challenges confronted when designing and constructing a automobile, and the aim every half serves. I’ve realized how you can use and function many new instruments and machines, and have superior my tender abilities corresponding to teamwork, communication, and problem-solving.” 
– Andrew Genovese, fourth-year Automotive Engineering scholar, School of Engineering and Utilized Science, Ontario Tech College

“Over the previous few months, the entire group has been engaged on constructing Canada’s first zero-emission electrical automobile idea automobile. Working with totally different suppliers and studying the whole automobile design and construct course of firsthand has been such a tremendous studying alternative.”
– Izzy Cossarin, fourth-year Mechatronics Engineering scholar, School of Engineering and Utilized Science, Ontario Tech College

Media contact

Bryan Oliver
Communications and Advertising and marketing
Ontario Tech College
289.928.3653 (cellular)
[email protected]

Constructing the Arrow idea electrical automobile within the ACE Innovation Storage at Ontario Tech College.

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