EcoCAR Challenge Teams Hit Home Stretch In Collegiate Alt-Fuel Contest
By John O'Dell May 24, 2010
By Danny King, Contributor
The spotless, 31,000-square-foot air-conditioned garage was supposed to shield them from an unrelenting desert near Yuma, Ariz., where daytime heat can reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
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It isn't what you'd expect to see on a showroom floor, but in Year Two of the three-year EcoCar Challenge, student teams are simply trying to make their alternative fuel conversions - like this battery-electric system by a team from Canada's University of Ontario- work efficiently in the Saturn Vue crossovers donated by General Motors Corp.
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The AC wasn't enough, though and temperatures still occasionally rose as teams from 16 North American colleges competing in the EcoCAR Challenge alternative-fuel car-building contest worked on their vehicles last week, racing against time to get their cars road-ready for the judging of stage two of this three-year event co-sponsored by General Motors and U.S. Energy Dept.
Winners of the Year Two segment will be decided in ocean-cooled San Diego this Thursday.
"Any team has its arguments, and things can get heated," said Virginia Tech graduate student and team leader Lynn Gantt, whose team is converting a conventional Saturn Vue crossover into an extended-range hybrid vehicle that will have a 40-mile electric-only cruising range and will be able to use E85 fuel in its combustion engine.
"But when we get the vehicle running, we're buddies again."
Larger U.S. and Canadian schools such as Ohio State and the University of Victoria are competing against smaller institutions such as Indiana's Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
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Mississippi State's extended-range plug-on hybrid entry on the asphalt at GM hot weather test facility near Yuma, Arizona.
They are vying for a share in the $100,000 Year Two prize money pool - not to mention bragging rights - to be awarded to the teams that rebuild their donated Saturn Vues to combine increased fuel economy and reduced emissions with elements such as safety, on-road performance and drive quality.
In Year One, the teams developed their plans and strategies and designed the cars and the electronic control systems they'd need to make them work.
The Ohio State University team won that stage and $16,000 of the $50,000 in prize money that was awarded.
For Year Two, the contest and its sponsors will award almost $100,000 in cash prizes, including first- through third-place awards for the top all-around teams and individual prizes for the team cars with the lowest fuel consumption, least well-to-wheel greenhouse-gas emissions, lowest tailpipe emissions, best technical report and best driving quality.
In the 12 months since GM gave the teams their Saturns, the students have been building and rebuilding powertrains, transmissions, electrical systems, interiors and anything else necessary to transform the cars into road-worthy (although not market-ready) alt-fuel vehicles for this week's Year Two judging.
It wasn't unusual for the 250 or so students to log 100-hour weeks before the cars were shipped to GM's 2,400-acre hot-weather testing facilities in the Arizona desert for last week's final touches.
Of the 16 vehicles entered, eight are extended-range plug-in vehicles (EREVs) whose combustion-engine generators can run on either biodiesel or ethanol and provide power to keep the electric drive motor going when the initial; battery charge is depleted.
There are two plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) that use hydrogen fuel-cells instead as on-board power supplies for the electric drive motors after the rechargeable battery packs are depleted, and two PHEVs that augment their electric motors and grid-rechargeable batteries with engines that burn blends of gasoline and ethanol.
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Rose-Hulman Institute team members work on their biodiesel-burning hybrid-electric entry in the GM test center's sprawling, air-conditioned garage.
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One entry is a biodiesel-burning PHEV; one's an ethanol-burning conventional hybrid (its batteries are not rechargeable from the commercial power grid); another is a conventional hybrid using biodiesel; and one's a battery-electric vehicle.
As the teams tried to make the most of their allotted hours on site, judges from GM, the DOE, Argonne National Laboratories and A123Systems (the company that donated the lithium-ion battery packs used in most of the cars) examined and road-tested the vehicles at GM's test tracks.
Meanwhile, contest officials tracked progress in a checklist drawn on the garage's huge white dry-erase board that listed each team and the 18 judging criteria - including safety, towing capacity, acceleration and cargo capacity (many of teams removed the rear seats to make room for the new drivetrain components)
A passing mark of "P", such as the first ones given out to teams like Penn State and Mississippi State during the teams' third day in the garage, helped ease the stress on students who'd been tackling a constant stream of challenges ranging from the highly technical to the mundane.
"A three-hour project took about seven hours after I dropped a washer into the engine," 23-year-old Penn State team member Benjamin Koch recalled with a chuckle. "We had about 10 people with magnets in there."
Despite the competition, some teams tried to help each other get over technical humps involved in configuring electric-and-combustion-engine combinations that many established automakers have yet to attempt.
"We're bouncing ideas back and forth," said University of Waterloo team leader Alexander Koch, pointing to nearby Missouri University of Science & Technology. the two are the only ones using hydrogen fuel-cell systems. "I'd be working on something in the engine bay, "Koch recalled, "and they'd say, 'You may leak there if you don't move your gasket.'"
While many of the cars share drivetrain technology, some teams are using unique approaches to get ahead in the competition.
Florida's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is using weight-reducing materials such as Kevlar and copper mesh to help offset the additional weight from its EREV's diesel engine, electric motor and battery pack.
Meanwhile, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology is banking on its use of an all-electric drivetrain as a way to avoid the gas-electric dual powerplant control issues perplexing many of the teams with hybrids last week.
Team members said they also hope that judges will be impressed by their daring in going all -electric and that it will help offset the negative impact on cargo space and vehicle-handling that have resulted form the need to install an 1,100-pound battery pack where the vehicle's back seat used to be.
In a nod to its northern roots, the University of Wisconsin team paired its EREV's electric motor with a 750 cc turbocharged Weber snowmobile engine that powers the vehicle's front wheels and can run on ethanol-blended fuel.
After the Year Two winner is announced Thursday, the teams will spend the final year of the competition tucking away all of the electrical, technical and mechanical components added during the so-called "mule" stage and fine-tuning the vehicles - looks and performance - to approach what contest organizers call "near-showroom quality."
Fenders of lightweight but super-strong Kevlar-reinforced resin are one way the team from Embry-Riddle has adapted aeronautical techniques to help improve the performance and fuel economy of its PHEV entry in the EcoCAR Challenge.
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"Hopefully, good jobs," Maxson said.
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