

Ask HN: How to get into car engineering/making - freshfey

Hello,<p>I'm an EE undergrad at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. As much as I love EE, I'd love to work in the field of car engineering (not necessarily as an EE though). I'd like to build cars with new technology, but I have no clue how and where to start. The only way I knew was to get a good degree and work at Tesla or other similiar companies. However I love the idea of being an entrepreneur and I can see myself creating something like that in this field.<p>Can I get the necessary knowledge about car engineering from books, or would I have to intern / work in this area a period of time before actually building something myself.<p>I thought that I could get into R&#38;D through the university but I don't want to stay in academia for the rest of my life.<p>Where should I start?<p>Thanks.
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mechanical_fish
I will give you two answers.

The first one is this book: _Build your Own Sports Car for as Little as 250
Pounds... And Race It!_

[http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Sports-
Little-£250/dp/18596...](http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Sports-
Little-£250/dp/1859606369)

a book which, oops, appears to have become _priceless_ since I bought it years
ago. I guess it's out of print. This is a suspiciously similar version:

[http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-Sports-
Car/dp/184425391...](http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-Sports-
Car/dp/1844253910)

... which the Amazon reviewers critique for being "Eurocentric". Oh, what a
terrible problem that must be. Unless you live in Zurich! Wink, wink. ;)

I'm being serious here: As an American, I am constitutionally required to
insist that the correct way to learn how cars work is from the ground up. Get
a car. Take it apart. Then put it together again. Do they have autocross in
Zurich? Amateur rally racing? Sports car clubs? Trade schools that will teach
you a course in basic auto repair? Try 'em all. In the USA, at any rate, it is
very easy to find people who spend more time thinking about cars and driving
than is healthy.

You don't need to work for Tesla to build an electric car. Take a small car
and convert it to electric:

<http://www.diyelectriccar.com/>

\---

The other answer is: If you dream of working at a company like Tesla, find
someone who works at Tesla and ask them what the job is like. That's the only
way. You might hear back from someone here on HN itself, so asking here was a
fine plan.

What you should _not_ do -- at first -- is find some school that claims to
teach you everything you need to know to be an automotive engineer. It turns
out that schools are very happy to sell you education whether or not you
actually need or want it. But I've lost count of the number of people I know
who decided they might like career X, spent years in school studying X, _then_
turned up for work and discovered that they really don't like X. Try to sample
your chosen career as much as you can before you actually spend years learning
to do it properly.

