Supporting the next generation of engineering

The Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) was founded in 2006 by students of ETH Zurich and is the first Swiss team ever to compete in Formula Student, the world's largest engineering competition for university students. Every season, AMZ designs, builds, and races a brand-new single-seat prototype against around 500 teams worldwide.

AMZ moved from combustion to fully electric racing in 2010 and became a pioneer in autonomous racing when Formula Student introduced the Driverless class in 2017. Today, the team is widely considered a world reference for electric and autonomous Formula Student and the holder of the official Guinness World Record for the fastest acceleration of an electric vehicle with 0-100km/h in 0.956s.

AMZ runs like an engineering company. Around 115 students take on full project responsibility for a single season, structured into a clear hierarchy: a five-person C-level (CEO, COO, and three CTOs covering Mechanical, Electrical, and Driverless) leads the organization as a collective, making key strategic decisions together before passing direction down to module leads who handle week-by-week execution.

Targets are defined using the SMART framework: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The team sets overall season goals (winning all four competitions, hitting a target car weight, completing a defined number of test kilometres), then cascades them down to module goals and individual engineer goals. Communication runs through Slack and weekly meetings at every level. With nearly twenty years of accumulated know-how, the association can stay agile when deadlines slip or budgets shift, and consistently plans two to three years ahead.

AMZ does not just integrate off-the-shelf components, the team writes its own software stack, including its own model predictive control (MPC) for the driverless car. Development follows a V-model and a two-week agile cadence: requirements are reviewed against the previous season, concepts are prototyped quickly against historic data and simulators, then commissioned subsystem by subsystem before being integrated and continuously tested on the car.

Every code change goes through a strict process, issue, branch, implementation, two code reviews, before it ever runs on the car. Decisions between competing approaches are made on benchmarks and metrics rather than gut feeling. 

Nera, AMZ's 2026 prototype has a carbon fibre monocoque chassis which weighs just 17.3 kg, with high torsional stiffness for a precise, predictable response on track. CFD-optimized aerodynamics generate over 200 kg of downforce at 80 km/h which is enough to keep the car planted through the fastest corners.

Power comes from four in-house motors, each producing 43.5 kW. The complete drive unit weighs only 2.46 kg and spins up to 28,000 RPM. Energy is supplied by a high-voltage accumulator built from 260 lithium-polymer cells, with a maximum voltage of 565.5 V and a total capacity of 6.87 kWh.

On the control side, Nera runs live telemetry, traction control and torque vectoring across all four wheels, and real-time kinematics for precise positioning. Underneath it all sits an electrical architecture of 350 metres of cabling, more than 60 sensors, and over 1,200 signals — every one of them feeding the team's decisions on track and in the workshop.

Facts:

• 17.3 kg carbon fibre monocoque with high torsional stiffness
• CFD-optimized aerodynamics — over 200 kg of downforce at 80 km/h
• 350 m of cabling, 60+ sensors, 1,200+ signals

Formula Student is not a race in the traditional sense: teams do not compete head-to-head on track. Instead, every team races against the clock across a series of individual timed disciplines, where the goal is to post the best time and score the most points across the full competition.

At each event, teams compete in both Static and Dynamic disciplines. The Static events (Engineering Design, Cost and Manufacturing, and Business Plan Presentation) are judged by industry experts and together account for up to 325 points. These assess the team's technical decisions, manufacturing approach, and ability to present their car as a marketable product.

The Dynamic disciplines put the cars on track and test performance across multiple dimensions. Acceleration measures sprint speed over a 75-metre straight. Skid Pad tests lateral grip through a figure-of-eight circuit. Autocross is a solo timed lap through a cone-marked course that also sets the grid for Endurance. Endurance (worth 250 points and the event's centrepiece) runs over 22 kilometres, with a mandatory driver change at the halfway point, testing the car's reliability and outright pace over distance. Efficiency measures energy consumption relative to speed during the Endurance run.

For teams like AMZ competing in both the electric and driverless classes, additional disciplines apply: Acceleration Driverless and Skid Pad Driverless score points toward the Driverless Cup, alongside Track Drive (a 10-lap autonomous endurance run worth 200 points) and Engineering Design judged specifically for the autonomous system.

AMZ competes across all relevant disciplines each season, fielding both a driven electric car and a fully autonomous vehicle. The team's results across this broad range of events (from technical presentations to timed laps to a fully driverless endurance run) is what determines the final standings and has placed AMZ consistently at the top of the global Formula Student rankings.