Michigan, California High Schoolers Vie to Design Green-Driving Dashboard

Michigan, California High Schoolers Vie to Design Green-Driving Dashboard

By John O'Dell May 4, 2010

By Danny King, Contributor

Parents of teenage drivers can rejoice - some of the best and brightest of your kids' generation are turning the old hot-rodder mentality on its head by granting bragging rights to those who drive slower.

Student teams from a pair of California high schools and one in Dearborn, Mich. are semifinalists in a contest to design a dashboard that encourages people to adopt the most fuel-efficient driving habits as possible.

The competition is funded by the federal Energy Department and is being conducted by Progressive Insurance's Progressive Automotive X PRIZE Education Program - which also is backing the $10 million Automotive X-Prize contest to find a marketable car that can achieve the fuel economy equivalent of 100 miles per gallon.

In the Progressive "Dash+" competition, the three finalist teams developed their projects in February and resented them to the judging panel on March 1. They bested more than 40 competitors and now are are vying for the opportunity to travel to Detroit to pitch their designs to automobile industry executives.

A five-member team from San Jose, Calif.'s Harker School has submitted a dashboard design for the contest that features a speedometer shaped like a tree that glows progressively greener when the driver engages in more fuel-efficiency maximizing driving patterns.

The student-designed instrument panel also would provide information on items like tire pressure, engine-oil condition and the weight items stored in the trunk, and relate to the driver how each impacts fuel economy.

Farther south on the California coast, at Santa Barbara's Dos Pueblos High School, a three-member team is proposing an energy-conserving organic LED (light-emitting diode) dashboard (left) with wireless communications that allow drivers to with each other about road and traffic conditions.

Additionally, the Dos Pueblos entry features system that grants drivers points for driving with a lighter touch and lets friends who get behind the wheel compare results. Drag racers need not apply.

The five-member team from Dearborn's Henry Ford Academy, near Detroit, also has an "eco points" feaure on its dash, which includes what team members call the world's first "avatar co-pilot" it its layout.

The eco-points racked up by drivers and credited to their avatars "allow you to compete with friends and set goals about your energy use and carbon footprint," Henry Ford Academy member Gabrielle Burgess-Smith, 15, said in her team's three-minute video about its entry, called the DashTech Internet Panel.

The Detroit students' design also includes features such as having the avatar get "sick" when drivers use a heavy foot and providing information on how much energy is being re-created by hybrid vehicles' regenerative braking systems.

The three schools join California's Los Altos High School, Indiana's Mater Dei High School and New York's Cicero-North Syracuse High School among a growing group of secondary schools with students who've taken a keen interest in designing cars with an eye on the environment.

In late March, Mater Dei and Cicero-North Syracuse won prizes for their lightweight, super-high-gas mileage vehicle and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles at the Shell Eco-Marathon in Houston, while Los Altos High's Academy of Engineering is preparing hydrogen-powered, battery-powered and solar-powered vehicles that will be shown off at the academy's fifth-annual open house fundraiser this weekend.

Such schools and student clubs are developing experts-in-training in the alternative fuels field - valuable career skills as automakers and car component manufacturers address tightening emissions and gas-mileage standards in both the U.S. and overseas.

By 2020, the European Union is looking to cut auto emissions by about 33 percent from the 1998 standard. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration in early last month finalized federal fuel-economy regulations in which industry-wide fleets will need to boost their collective gas mileage for the 2016 model year to 34 miles per gallon, which is about a 35 percent increase from current levels.

All of which leads Harker School member Vishesh Gupta, 16, to believe that what may be a distracting amount of information from a dashboard for some may actually inspire rapid-thinking teenagers to challenge themselves to drive slower, safer and more efficiently.

"There are a lot of small things that add up" to better fuel economy, Gupta said in an interview with Green Car Advisor. "But we're pretty confident that it won't be distracting."

You can see the three Dash+ finalists' submissions and vote for your preference - through the end of May -on the contest Website.

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.