Green Car Contests Challenging Students To Think of EV Charging, Eco-Driving
By John O'Dell November 3, 2009
With more fuel-efficient vehicles being pitched as key to a better future - at least from an environmental standpoint - two major green enterprises are launching student contests in an effort to breed awareness of the need to improve the efficiency of both cars and the electric-charging systems that may help propel them.
Better Place, which plans to market this elaborate battery swap station, is challenging graduate design students to come up with a hands-free EV charger that costs less than $1,000.
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Progressive Corp., one of the largest U.S. auto insurers, said that it's launching a contest for high school students to design dashboard instrumentation that helps drivers change their driving habits to boost their gas mileage.
High school students are asked to put on their thinking caps and design a dashboard instrument that helps drivers get better mileage. Ford's professional engineers came up with this "smart gauge' system in its Fusion hybrid.
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Both contests represent efforts to look beyond professional engineers to see what new generations of thinkers will come up with in the arenas of EV charging and gasoline and diesel fuel economy.
"We want to create a consumer experience with driving electric cars second to none," said Shai Agassi, founder and chief executive officer of Better Place, which recently showed a working version of its hands-free battery swap system in a trial program in Yokohama, Japan.
"Our design competition invites students to create an experience where charging your electric car is ideally a completely automated system so that the consumer can enjoy the freedom of electric mobility."
Progressive's announcement late last month was in conjunction with its Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a contest that awards $10 million to teams that can best design cars that get more than 100 miles per gallon, or the alt-fuel equivalent.
The company last month named 43 teams to compete in the final round of field testing next year.
Better Place said it will award 3,000 euros ($4,400) in January to each of 10 semifinalist teams, which must be from schools in BusinessWeek's list of the top 60 global design schools.
In May the Northern California company will award a 35,000 euro ($52,000) grand prize to a team that must then build a working system of its hands-free charger design by the end of October.
Better Place is one of several private firms working with California utilities such as Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric to develop a network of electric-car charging systems across the country's most populous state.
Danny King, Contributor
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