(Left) Mark Maher, Executive Director, GM Global Powertrain Engineering, congratulates Ohio State University on their first-place win in the 2009 EcoCAR Competition Finals along with (second to right) John Lushetsky, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Lisa Raitt (right), Canada's Minister of Natural Resources.

Engineering teams honored for green-vehicle architecture designs

Wixom, MI – Six North American university student engineering teams were recognized with top honors for their outstanding green-vehicle architecture designs at the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge Year-One Competition Finals June 7-12 in Toronto, Canada.

The EcoCAR Challenge is a three-year contest – with annual progress competitions - that challenges university engineering students across North America to re-engineer a 2009 Saturn VUE to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions, while maintaining the vehicle’s performance and consumer appeal.

All participating teams apply real-world automotive engineering practices through the use of model-based design techniques including hard-ware-In-the-loop (HIL) and software-In-the-loop (SIL) simulation to bring their vehicle control designs from concept to the road.

EcoCAR Challenge Year-One Winners:

• 1st place overall: The Ohio State University.
• 2nd place overall: University of Victoria.
• 3rd place overall: Mississippi State University.
• 4th place overall: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
• 5th place overall: University of Waterloo.
• 6th place overall: Virginia Tech. 

Of the 6 highest placing teams, four – the Ohio State University (First Place), the University of Victoria (Second Place), Mississippi State University (Third Place) and the University of Waterloo (Fifth Place) – all developed their vehicle control strategies using dSPACE HIL simulators and rapid control prototyping (RCP) systems.

“We were really, really excited to be able to show off what dSPACE tools are capable of and how they helped our team,” says Ohio State EcoCAR Team Captain Eric Schacht, a sen-ior electrical engineer student.

“Our control system has been able to accomplish a lot this year that never would have been possible without those tools.”

“We’re looking forward to next year to be able to make more use of the hardware-in-the-loop system to do some more real testing with our hardware and prepare our production quality vehicle,” says Systems Integration Leader John Kruckenberg, an electrical engineering student at Ohio State.

Ohio State prevailed over 16 other North American universities, partly by demonstrating the most effective use of modeling and simulation to develop their vehicle architecture.

The team’s EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle) architecture design is powered by a 1.8 liter engine and fueled by E85 ethanol. This design is predicted to increase the vehicle’s overall fuel economy by 300 percent.

The team’s cumulative point score was drawn from several key areas, including: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science engineering, control and systems engineering, electronics, engine and after-treatment techniques, management, marketing, finance, and public relations.

The University of Victoria was awarded with second place, also designing an EREV that runs on E85 ethanol while Mississippi State University won third place honors for its EREV, B20 biodiesel vehicle design.

dSPACE Embedded Success Award Winners

Held in conjunction with the EcoCAR year-one competition finals, dSPACE sponsored an “Embedded Success” contest in which EcoCAR teams were evaluated for how effectively they used dSPACE HIL equipment to simulate their vehicle architectures and produce plans for developing robust control strategies.

The three winners received cash awards and a comprehensive combination of dSPACE Automotive Simulation Model (ASM) modeling libraries that will enable them to perform real-time simulations of key automotive operations including engines, vehicle dynamics, electrical systems, and even traffic driving scenarios.

dSPACE’s Embedded Success awards went to Ohio State University (first place), University of Waterloo (second place), and University of Victoria (third place).

dSPACE is a platinum sponsor of the EcoCAR Challenge and congratulates all of the teams for the very fine display of engineering acumen shown at the recent first year competition.

The EcoCAR Challenge Continues

In the fall, the EcoCAR Challenge competition will kick-off the second year of the competition. All 17 participating universities will continue to refine their vehicle design architectures. At the conclusion of Year Two of the Challenge, the teams will turn their vehicle designs into functioning prototype vehicles. In the final year of the competition, the teams must produce “near showroom quality” vehicles.

For more information visit www.ecocarchallenge.org and www.green-garage.org