The Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE, is a professional organization representing students of all majors with a passion for the field of transportation, which include but are not limited to automotive, aerospace, consumer and commercial vehicles and their respective industries. As a branch of SAE located in UC Merced, professionalism and hands on experience is crucial for developing experienced and competitive graduates.

In the spirit of competition, SAE host a yearly competition in which schools from all over the world compete by developing and presenting an open-wheel formula style car. In an effort to focus on a student’s natural yearning for ingenuity, creativity, efficiency, and problem solving; the competition consists of events that test a student’s knowledge and application of static and dynamic mechanics. Events that test a vehicle's dynamics include: endurance, autocross, skid pad, acceleration and fuel economy; all of which exhibit the teams engineering skills. Static events demonstrate the student’s ability to deal with accounting, marketing, presentation, and engineering design. All in all, over 400 teams from all over the world compete in at least one of 8 competitions worldwide; two of which are located in the United States. Formula SAE® Michigan and Nebraska will be the two events that UC Merced Racing will be participating in for the upcoming year.

The Michigan competition brings much more industry professionals and competitive teams; yielding a greater chance to build connections and gain internships from industry leaders. The competitiveness is a great learning experience for our members as well as a place to iron out any flaws preventing us from placing better. Appendix 1.1 gives an overview of how teams place in Michigan vs. their placement in the later Fontana competition (Fontana has been moved to Nebraska for 2012). With this opportunity, we will be able to bring UC Merced international recognition and publications as a professional and prestigious university.

In the reality of funding, SAE will only be able to bring so many members to each competition. By setting up two, we are able to allow double the members to experience the competition.

This year UC Merced Racing is developing and testing a new formula car, the M-12 (which has major improvements, incomparable to last year's M-11). Utilizing the abundant amount of members joining the organization, over sixty members will be working to develop this year’s formula car.