MSU's EcoCAR 2 Team Completes Competition
May 24, 2013Mississippi State's EcoCAR 2 team is bringing home several awards from year two of a highly competitive three-year advanced automotive engineering challenge. They earned awards for Best Controls Presentation; Best Communications Presentation; 1st place dSPACE video award; 3rd place overall business program; and 3rd place Mathworks Modeling award.
The team placed fifth overall out of 15 competitively selected collegiate teams from universities across North America competing to reduce the environmental impact of a Chevrolet Malibu without compromising performance, safety or consumer acceptability. Pennsylvania State University was named the year two winner. The third and final year of "EcoCAR 2: Plugging In to the Future," will be held in Washington, D.C. in May 2014. The first year of competition focused on computer-based modeling and simulations to test the teams' design ideas, and the 2013 challenge tested the implementation of those designs. Now, the team will embark on meticulous efforts to refine their work in preparation for year three competition.
EcoCAR 2 is the latest three-year collegiate advanced vehicle technology competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. Managed by Argonne National Laboratory, the competition evaluates how teams meet technical goals designed to support industry's need for engineers well versed in advanced vehicle propulsion. In preparing their team's car, students incorporate lightweight materials into the vehicles, improve aerodynamics, and utilize alternative fuels, such as ethanol, biodiesel and hydrogen.
The goals are to design and integrate vehicle powertrains that, when compared to the production gasoline vehicle, reduce petroleum energy consumption on the basis of a total fuel cycle analysis; reduce fuel consumption; reduce well-to-wheel and greenhouse gas emissions; and reduce criteria tailpipe emissions.
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