General Motors, Department of Energy and College Students Present EcoCAR Designs in Washington, DC

The Washington Auto Show featured a presentation by 17 teams of engineering students participating in the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge program. This program is funded by the Department of Energy (DOE), the California Air Resources Board (CARB), GM and other participants to find the next generation of green vehicle designs. EcoCAR teams have three years to design, implement and test electric vehicle (EV) prototypes including all-electric and plug-in models. The Washington presentation last week was a single step in this long process. 

 

The principal sponsors of the EcoCAR teams are providing substantial resources to develop these vehicle prototypes. The Department of Energy is allowing students to access the Argonne National Laboratory throughout the competition, ensuring that experienced researchers can determine the feasibility of green vehicle designs. General Motors is offering vehicle parts, technical know-how and the startup funds to encourage innovation among all the participating teams. Lest we think that the EcoCAR program is merely a bastion of engineers from liberal schools, the program consists of schools like Texas Tech, West Virginia University and Michigan Tech to ensure geographic diversity.

GM, the Department of Energy and other sponsors set ground rules for each team before the competition began. Each team needs to create a vehicle that can be recharged through electric outlets, uses lithium-ion battery packs and replaces petroleum with another fuel source for a majority of its power. The final criterion is that each vehicle has to meet safety and performance standards laid out by the auto industry at present, no doubt a provision created by GM to ensure that successful prototypes could leap into the real world at some point. 

The vehicle designs shown in Washington, DC last week spanned four separate green vehicle categories. A plurality of the EcoCAR teams worked on extended range EVs that ran on E85 to boost the driving range with each charge. Other groups worked on plug-in hybrids, all-electric vehicles and fuel cell PHEVs to show that the path to cleaner transportation does not rely on the fortunes of biofuel producers.

The participation of the DOE, the Canadian federal government and CARB in this competition shows the broad support for greener vehicles in North America. GM’s sponsorship of the EcoCAR teams may seem like a public method of vetting future models but we cannot be picky these days with the path to innovation in the transportation sector. We should hope that the combination of world-class resources, young minds and a common goal toward fuel-efficient vehicles translates into a green revolution (or, at least, an evolution) in the American auto industry.