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07.11

EcoCAR Competition Prepares Engineering Students to Tackle Tomorrow’s Engineering Challenges

On 16 June, Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Chu was on hand at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, DC, to welcome and congratulate the participating student engineering teams from 16 colleges from across the United States and Canada who have been working diligently over the past three years to compete in the prestigious EcoCAR Challenge. The contest, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors, requires the student teams to modify a vehicle donated by General Motors — this contest featured a Saturn Vue crossover — to minimize fuel consumption and environmental impact, while maintaining all applicable utility, safety and performance standards, as well as market appeal.

Teams were given the options of using several different engineering designs to achieve their goals, including Extended Range Electric Vehicles (EREV), Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV), Full Function Electric Vehicles (FFEV) and Fuel Cell Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FC PHEV) designs.

The team from Virginia Tech emerged victorious with an EREV that has both an all-electric and gasoline-only mode that is powered by a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (called E85). With this technology, Virginia Tech created a car that got an equivalent of 82 miles on a gallon of fuel, and in doing so garnered the $7,000 first place prize, which the school plans to channel back into more engineering projects.

Throughout the three-year competition, the Virginia Tech team hit incremental goals that helped the vehicle achieve fuel efficiency 70 percent over the stock vehicle, positioning them above the rest. And Virginia Tech’s EREV out-performed its competitors earlier this month when it was put through a series of safety and technical tests at GM’s Proving Ground in Milford, Mich., tests similar to those conducted on GM production vehicles.

“Designing an extended-range electric vehicle using E85 was challenging, but clearly worth it in the end,” said Patrick Walsh, co-team leader for Virginia Tech.

“The entire team has put so much time and effort into designing and refining our vehicle, and we’ve gained valuable knowledge and hands-on experience that will prepare us for our engineering careers.”

“With the experience and skills these innovative students have gained through the EcoCAR competition, they will help reduce our nation’s reliance on oil imports and keep U.S. industries competitive in the global marketplace,” said Secretary Chu. But according to Chu, the real benefit of the competition was not so much the end-result vehicles, which were indeed impressive, but having future engineers get the hands-on experience of creating real-world solutions to real-world challenges.

“The ingenuity and dedication shown by the students of Virginia Tech in building this next-generation vehicle will help them launch careers as leaders in the clean energy field,” said Chu.

In a recent article on the competition, Micky Bly, GM’s head of electrification, told the Wall Street Journal that, “We’re very aggressive 0n hiring the best talent. When they show up at GM, they are ready to go engineers.”

So impressed by the 200 some engineering students involved in the competition were the people at GM that they have already secured commitments from 39 of them to begin working for the automaker this year. And in the three years of the company’s sponsorship of the competition, they’ve hired around 100 students into their ranks. Not a bad conversion rate, especially considering the fact that they’ve got their pick of some of the most talented — and prepared — engineering students in North America.

Eight of the EcoCAR teams elected to go with the EREV option, including second-place finisher Ohio State. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Mississippi State University, Penn State, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Victoria and Virginia Tech and North Carolina State University all used versions of EREV technology .

The third-place team, the University of Waterloo used a Fuel Cell Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle, as did Missouri University of Science and Technology. The FC PHEV uses as onboard hydrogen fuel cell to propel the vehicle or recharge a lithium-ion battery pack.

The University of Ontario Institute Of Technology was the only team to use the Full Function Electric Vehicle, which is fully electric and does not rely on internal combustion technology at all.

Five teams, Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan Tech University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Texas Tech University and West Virginia University opted to use Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles that operate using a large lithium-ion battery, but can rely for a short period of time on a small internal combustion engine powered by E85 or a mix of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent gasoline, called (B20).

Despite the technology leeway that was given to the teams, all of the vehicles were required to have three common attributes: 1) plug-in capability; 2) lithium-ion batteries; and 3) the capability to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The competition was divided into three stages over three years. The first year, student teams began design of their vehicles using state-of-the-art design, simulation and modeling tools and software provided by more than 30 industry sponsors. Each team was aided by $10,000 in seed money and guidance from experts from the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. Years two and three allowed each to build, test and refine the vehicles, after which they underwent cycles of testing similar to the tests GM uses on all of its prototypes to determine a vehicle’s readiness for production.

In the week-long final competition, the vehicles were tested on four criteria:

• Well-to-wheel petroleum energy consumption

• Vehicle energy efficiency

• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

• Performance, utility and safety

Bill Williams is IEEE-USA's legislative representative for technology policy activities.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.