Since 2009, Istanbul University - Cerrahpasa’s Electric-Electronic Engineering
Department has won numerous championships on national racing platforms and on international
racing platforms with alternative energized vehicle teams (Solar Vehicles, Hydrogen Vehicles
and Electric Vehicles).
In the year 2012, we started our research & development work on electric vehicles,
considering the fact of depletion of fossil fuels and the potential usage of electric cars in the
future. Regarding this situation, we created an electric passenger car project with the support of
Scientific Research Projects Budget of Istanbul University - Cerrahpasa in 2012 by starting with
the aim of solving the “fully domestic-component automobile” which is one of the most
important problem of Turkey. We started a deep research and development work for this project
with our team. We have determined our vehicle design which has the most appropriate
aerodynamic structure. We built our vehicle along with all its components using carbon fiber
composite material, one of the most advanced material of present time. In the year 2014, our
first vehicle was ready.
In the first year of TÜBİTAK Alternative Energy Vehicle Competition, our team got first
place, proving the quality of the work done. The goal in the race was to spend the least amount
of energy by completing the required tours within the specified time, in other words keeping
the energy efficiency at a high level. We decided to create a Turkey tour event in order to
increase the awareness of our nation about electric vehicles. Within this activity, a total of 4650
km of course was done, from 25 cities to 12 city centers, in every city we made elegant
presentations. Our journey started from Istanbul to capital Ankara with a single charge with the
journey time of 6 hours 10 minutes and a total distance of 436 km/h with a cost of 7.2 TL (about
2,5 Euros in that time). Our car, started from Istanbul, passing through Ankara, Samsun,
Trabzon, Erzurum, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Kayseri, Konya, Antalya, Izmir, Eskişehir and
Çanakkale, successfully passed all the performance tests during its journey.
Our main project & team objective is to design and develop national vehicles along with
developing national sub-systems, which will be in line with the needs of the Turkish industry
within the framework of university-industry cooperation, with following the innovations in the
world about the subject of electric vehicles and to minimize external dependence on electric
vehicles and its components.
The Project ‘’MilAT’’ covers an area where Istanbul University - Cerrahpasa academics
and students can work diligently on the concept of electric vehicles, rather than just developing
and producing a single vehicle or subsystem. From this point of view, project MilAT is an R&D
platform rather than just a product team.
‘’MilAT’’ brand was born from the combination of the words "Milli Araç Tasarımı(National Vehicle Design)". MilAT represents our vision of becoming a real milestone by
experiencing R&D activities to design electric vehicles, at the same time being a turning point
with national achievements as a result of the total R&D work as the word ‘’milat’’ means
“turning point” in Turkish.
Although MilAT is a profit-free scientific project, we are always ensuring that the
subsystems studied & created are as adaptable & usable within the industry. It will be only
possible with this strategy/point of view; for the whole work to be transformed into industryusable products. It will be our pride to achieve technological developments that can be
transferred to the national automotive industry.
In the globalizing world, complicated and high-tech applications are consisting of
hundreds of subsystems. These subsystems are produced and marketed by companies in various
countries with high R&D investments. In our point of view, in order for a product to be national,
it must be created with national resources. From this point of view again, the term/concept
‘national vehicle’ must be created with national resources, to summarize, we are working on this
concept.
