Siblings Luke and Laura Horsfall chose to design, build and race electric cars in the Greenpower series rather than attend university. The results have been national success, international travel and inspirational careers – and, according to the Horsfalls, those participating in the Formula E schools series have just as much to look forward to.

Meet Luke and Laura Horsfall. Luke is a 26 year old composites design engineer at British firm Formaplex. There, he’s leading a project to develop an electric vehicle that will challenge for a world endurance record later this year.

Laura, 22, is Luke’s sister. She’s an events coordinator at the charity Greenpower, which seeks to stimulate interest in engineering by getting school children to build and race electric kit cars. The organisation is also behind the Formula E schools programme, which applies the project’s successful template to cities around the world, giving children the opportunity to race their cars on the full scale Formula E tracks, on Formula E race days.

Both Luke and Laura skipped university – for years touted in the UK as the only credible route into a secure, well-paid career – in favour of accruing engineering, management and marketing skills through the Greenpower schools challenge. In the process, their small home-based team beat entries fielded by the likes of Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley, making them national champions and catapulting them into their dream jobs.

“Formaplex manufactures tooling for every F1 team, as well as all sorts of stuff for the defence and aerospace sectors – but we can’t talk about any of it,” says Luke. “Instead, to show off what we can do, we’re attempting to set a new record for the distance travelled by an electric car in 24 hours.”

The project is no half-hearted PR fluff. The vehicle boasts advanced technology such as bio-composites, swappable batteries and carbon fibre wheels, in an attempt to snare a record contested by the likes of Holden and Renault. Partners include Williams and Dunlop and the attempt will be sanctioned by the FIA. “Renault did around 1000 miles; Holden about 1200,” Luke says. “We’re looking to do 2000 miles.”

But the car is much more than simply a showcase for Formaplex: it’s proof that participating in the Greenpower programme – and, by extension, the Formula E schools series – can deliver young people to the very forefront of cutting-edge advanced engineering.

Humble beginnings

Luke’s engineering journey started in the schoolyard. “I’d always had an interest in how things worked but I’d never thought about it too much,” he says. “When I was in Year 9 – about 13 years old – someone came up to me in the playground and said: ‘Luke, you’re short – do you want to drive a racing car?’ Of course I did!”

Back then, it was early days for Greenpower, a charity set up to encourage greater interest in science, engineering and technology subjects by allowing students to build and race electric cars.

“It was July 2002,” Luke recalls. “The race was at Ford’s UK test track. What an amazing opportunity – to visit a top secret location like that. As we were getting ready to take our little car onto the track, we saw a camouflaged car come out – it turned out to be the new Ford Focus. Straight away, you could see the exciting side of engineering.”

The racing car itself was a modest start: a completely wooden affair powered by two 12V lead acid batteries, weighing in at 65kg and sat on bicycle wheels. Top speed was a somewhat less-than-exhilarating 22mph.

“Our first race wasn’t amazing,” Luke says. “I drove three laps but I soon discovered I enjoyed running the team more. I was never a confident person but, because I enjoyed it, I became good at it. It was a positive circle. We built an entirely new car over the summer and scraped through to the national finals in the autumn, at Goodwood.”

The series of regional heats gave Luke his first taste of motorsports competition and he was quickly hooked: “Back then, the races were six hours long. We were supposed to have six drivers at each event but it was amazing how many didn’t turn up on the day. At some races we only had two drivers. Racing lines were key and, especially as we got quicker, so was negotiating traffic. Sometimes the closing speeds could be around 30mph – quite a challenge on bike tyres.”

The simple nature of the cars didn’t constrain the ingenuity of the students trying to extract maximum performance from identical mandated powertrains.

“The tyres we used were rated to 100psi but we’d run them at 150psi,” Luke remembers. “The car was rear wheel drive and with only one driven wheel. A chain ran straight from the motor to the wheel. We experimented with infinitely variable transmissions later – but that was ultimately just too clever, so we went back to two sprockets. We did look at two wheel drive with a transmission but the energy losses were simply too great.”

It wasn’t long before Luke’s younger sister was snapping at his heels. “I had this quite cool older brother who raced around these famous tracks – I was quite jealous,” Laura laughs. “When I started at the same secondary school, Luke told me to go and see the teacher who was overseeing the Greenpower project. I went in my first lunchtime. There were other girls in the team already, so I didn’t feel like it was anything particularly unusual.”

However, that early start very nearly tuned into an early finish, too. “My first memory of driving the car was testing it out,” Laura says. “I ended up heading towards Luke and I didn’t stop. I almost ran him over!”

“That car had 50:50 weight distribution and a long wheelbase and you still managed to spin it,” Luke interjects playfully.

From the classroom to competing with OEMs

Greenpower began for the Horsfalls as an after-school activity. “It can be as big a project as you want it to be,” says Luke. “The supplied kits can be put together in a day, if you know what you’re doing. Or you can spend months building something from scratch. We did something like two hours after school on a Friday, every week, and the occasional Saturday or Sunday.”

The input of keen teachers was vital. “The teachers we had were fantastic and we’re still in touch now,” Luke says. “They were very keen on composites and taught us how to work with carbon fibre, glass fibre and Kevlar. How many 13 year old kids can say they know how to work with carbon fibre?”

“Our second car had a composite monocoque,” Laura explains. “By the time we finished, just about everything on the car was bespoke and we were topping out at nearly 50mph. On bicycle tyres.”

Greenpower is organised into several classes, roughly according to age groups. At the upper end is a category that allows private teams to enter with older team members. It’s something that automotive manufacturers like Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley use to help integrate new apprentices and graduates.

“I got to the end of my time at school and realised I wasn’t quite finished with Greenpower yet,” Luke says. “The project at school gave us the confidence to try it ourselves. We suddenly had this opportunity to be the best in the country at something.”

“We had unfinished business,” Laura agrees. The result was the Horsfall Racing team.

“We went to five or six races each year for the next five years,” says Laura. “People came and went but the core of the team always remained Luke and I. Our major breakthrough was our first win at the national final, in 2011. We went from being outsiders to winning by two clear laps at Goodwood. Then we thought we’d have a shot at the championship itself, which we won in 2012.”

The championship campaign called for upping the ante on the engineering side. “We didn’t have advanced facilities,” says Laura. “We were working in our dad’s garage.”

“A sponsor saw what we could do and offered to help us build two cars,” Luke explains. “We taught ourselves CAD and CFD. Once we had the rough form, I ran simulations – probably around 120, at three hours each, plus all the analysis and design modifications in between. We ended up with a car with recycled ABS body panels and a chassis built from aluminium honeycomb. We even had an on-board data logger.”

As the car progressed, the Horsfalls tried out exotic and complex configurations of drivetrain systems to extract the most from the regulation batteries and motor. “Eventually, we went back to a single gear and direct drive, stripping it all back,” says Luke. “It all came down to aerodynamics really. The secret was the shape of the car.”

Other tricks had been learned earlier in the pair’s Greenpower experiences, including a counter-intuitive driving style to maximise speed and energy conservation. “In fact, many of those are things we’ve seen the Formula E teams learning in their first season,” says Laura.

“Winning the national final is like winning Monaco,” says Luke. “Depending on the category you’re in, the final can count for everything. You can often go into the final with two or three teams still competing for the championship. Beating big name OEMs was pretty sweet.”

Evolution of a Greenpower car 2002 2012 Dimensions (mm) 2500 x 750 x 100 2800 x 700 x 750 Weight (kg) ex batteries 65 55 Weight (kg) batteries 36 20 Batteries 2 x 12 75ah wet lead acid 2 x 12V 35ah AGM Motor Fracmo 240W, no cooling, run at 720W Fracmo 240W, 24V fan, run at 720W Motor control 24V relay on/off Yakamatushi 3000XTR, built to our spec Top speed 22mph 48mph

The Greenpower “academy”

Both Horsfalls viewed their team as an alternative to studying for a degree. “I decided to look at it as my university,” Luke explains. “I even got a part-time job to fund it!”

The commitment paid off. “I sent my CV to Formaplex last thing one night and I had a message from them before I’d got to work the next morning,” Luke recounts. “And it was about a graduate’s position.”

“For me, Greenpower has been priceless,” Laura says, who is now travelling the globe as part of the Greenpower team charged with running the Formula E schools programme. “It wasn’t just an engineering or motorsports project: it’s given me skills I can take through my whole life. I remember sitting at our kitchen table, on the phone to a harness company, asking them to supply us. In the end, they offered to make us a bespoke harness. Not even F1 teams have bespoke harnesses! I’m quite practical – my mum calls me a tomboy in lace – so being hands-on and learning on the job was definitely better for me than going to university.”

Luke agrees: “Greenpower taught me a lot of life lessons. There are hundreds of different karting series to prepare drivers for racing, but what about the engineers and those who lead the teams? Greenpower is an academy that equips you to run high pressure operations. It gives you an engineering background, hands-on experience with racing operations and a good understanding of media communications, because a lot of us ran websites and social media and dealt with sponsors from an early age. Had I gone to university, I may have had more knowledge in a narrow field but, with Greenpower, you come out with the whole package.”

The Formula E schools series returns to the track in Berlin on Saturday.