Challenge X Provides Look at the Future
By John O'Dell November 29, 2007
Students Modified SUVs for Clean, Green Running in Challenge X
There's a lot of energy being expended on the green car front, both within the auto industry and on the outside, which is where many of the breakthroughs come from.
After all, two years ago while a number of small start-ups in California were hammering together homemade plug-in hybrid versions of the Toyota Prius, Toyota the other major automakers were adamant that mass-market plug-ins would never fly.
Too expensive and too technologically messy, they said. Battery technology would never advance to the point that would make them practical, they said.
Now, though, almost every major automaker, Toyota included, has a plug-in project under way.
Most are doing so because the early work on plug-ins by companies like Energy CS in Monrovia spurred public awareness and a groundswell of demand.
Even if the automakers wanted to ignore it, California's emissions regulators didn't. Plug-in hybrids are now expected to be a key element in next year's update of the state's groundbreaking Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate.
The plug-in pioneers showed that prodding from little guys on the outside could help move the giant auto industry.
Bringing Outsiders In
It's even better, though, when those little guys with a passion for cleaner, greener cars and trucks with stellar fujel economy can get inside and, as they advance up the corporate ladder, influence things in a big way.
Pennsylvania State Team Leader Tom McGuire Sees Hydrogen Future
That's the dream of a couple hundred engineering and business students from 17 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, all participating in Challenge X, a four-year competition co-sponsored by the U.S. Energy Department and General Motors Corp.
The challenge, now entering its final stage, was handed down in 2004 when the teams were asked to take a 2005 model year Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicles and apply their talents to reducing the SUV's environmental impact while retaining mass market appeal.
GM benefits by seeing how well the students perform and picking the cream of the crop for its own engineering and marketing departments (yes, marketing -- making a business case for the project was part of each team's challenge). GM so far has picked up 30 Challenge X participants for its own staff, students who graduated during the course of the program.
Tom McGuire, a graduate student in fuel science at Pennsylvania State University, would like to be one of those who make the jump from academia into the automotive industry.
He sees his participation in the challenge as not only a tremendous educational experience but as a way to strut his stuff in front of a great many potential employers. So does Chris Haliburton, co-leader of the team from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Chris Haliburton with Fuel Cell entry From University of Waterloo
Haliburton (no relation, he says, to the oilfield services corporation) also heads the power controls group for the university's Alternative Fuels Team, and has had the opportunity to explain the strategy to GM Chairman Rick Wagoner – a job interview opportunity for which many an engineer would gladly surrender his pocket protector.
Gathering in Southern California
The Penn State and Waterloo teams were two of 16 that brought their vehicles to Los Angels on Thursday for a media show-and-tell at the Petersen Automotive museum.
The teams also will be displaying and explaining their projects at the annual Electric Vehicle Symposium, which kicks off a four-day run at the Anaheim Convention Center, near Disneyland, on Sunday.
They'll be driving the Challenge X entries in a caravan, trailed by a gaggle of support vans, from Los Angeles to Anaheim for the symposium.
"This is the first time we've had all the teams (one, the University of Michigan, didn't make it because of a mechanical problem) together and asked them to drive their vehicles in a sort of rally," said GM representative Cindy Svestka.
Although each team began with a Chevy Equinox, the vehicles are quite different now. Although many share the same engine type, there are differences in the electric motors, batteries, transmissions and fuels and the complex electronics and power control programming the teams designed.
Most chose to hybridize their vehicles: one uses a hydrogen fuel cell for power, one uses a unique hydraulic motor system and the others all are dual-powerplant hybrids of one type or another.
Unusual Fuel Mix
The B20 bend of regular diesel and bio-diesel from renewable crop material is a popular fuel, used by 11 teams; three use E85 ethanol, one uses reformulated gasoline, one uses B20 diesel augmented with hydrogen, and the fuel cell team uses pure hydrogen.
McGuire, leader of the Pennsylvania State team, explained the unusual B20-hydrogen system:
"We inject the hydrogen gas into the diesel engine's air intake just before the turbocharger. It works a little like nitrous oxide" in a street-racer's hotrod, improving the way the fuel burns and boosting the 1.3-iter GM diesel engine's horsepower by about 10%.
The final stage of Challenge X, to be held at the end of May at GM's proving grounds in Milford, Mich., will include emissions testing – along with fuel economy, acceleration, driveability and an assessment of each vehicle's consumer appeal.
McGuire didn't want to give away any of his team's secrets, but did say that, in addition to the providing extra power, the hydrogen burns away most of the soot in the diesel fuel, resulting in cleaner emissions.
The Penn State teams' diesel-electric hybrid, he said, meets emissions standards in all 50 states -- a year or more before many of the major automakers will be able to say the same of their diesel-powered vehicles.
Fuel Cell Underscores Progress
The Canadian team from University of Waterloo entered the competition's only fuel cell-electric vehicle, and its components illustrate how far that technology has come since 2004 when work on the vehicle commenced.
Honda motor Co. unveiled a production-ready fuel cell sedan, the FCX Clarity, at the Los Angeles Auto Show in mid-November that featured a powerful hydrogen electric system so compact it was packaged almost entirely beneath the floor. And GM is about to begin leasing 100 test models of a fuel cell-powered Equinox that is almost indistinguishable from a gasoline-powered model except for a slightly smaller cargo area.
By comparison, the Waterloo entry uses a fuel cell stack that required the flooring under the front and back seats to be raised almost eight inches, necessitating special downsized seats that can't be adjusted.
The 4.2-kilogram hydrogen tank provides the power equivalent of 4 gallons of gasoline, but fills most of the cargo area in the Waterloo Equinox. In the Honda Clarity, a new-generation tank that holds the same amount of fuel is about half the size.
"You can see how much this stuff has shrunk since we started," Haliburton said.
But the students are working with what was state of the art when they started, not what's cutting-edge today.
"Still, you look out there," Svestka said, pointing to the 16 highly modified SUVS surrounded by college students eager to explain the wonders they've worked, "and you see the future.'
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