TransForum Vol. 4, No.1

REAPING REWARDS FROM 15 YEARS OF STUDENT COMPETITIONS

FutureTruck and other DOE engineering competitions encourage innovations

The brightly colored vehicles, covered with decals touting their sponsors, raced around the track as the drivers pushed the engines to their limits. To the casual observer, it might appear to be just another day at the California Motor Speedway. However, the vehicles were not race cars — they were experimental sport utility vehicles (SUVs) participating in the FutureTruck 2002 college-level automotive engineering competition.

The competitors were all driving mid-size Ford Explorers that had been modified to incorporate cutting-edge automotive technologies, including fuel cells and other advanced propulsion systems, space-age materials, and such alternative fuels as ethanol and hydrogen. FutureTruck 2002, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Ford, and dozens of other industry and agency sponsors, challenged student teams from 15 top North American universities to reengineer a conventional SUV into a low-emissions vehicle with at least 25% higher fuel economy — without sacrificing the performance, utility, safety, and affordability consumers want.

"Most consumers are interested in better gas mileage and helping keep our environment clean, but they also don't want to have to worry about their own vehicle's energy consumption and emissions," says Dr. Harvey Drucker, Associate Director of Energy and Environmental Technology at Argonne. "The overarching goal of FutureTruck and other DOE student competitions is to explore the far boundaries of automotive technology and develop improved vehicles that consumers not only want to drive, but that also don't guzzle a lot of fuel and generate high levels of harmful emissions."

The emphasis of the competition is on pushing the technology envelope, and this year's competition saw many successes. For example, 14 out of 15 FutureTruck 2002 vehicles successfully operated in at least one event — a record for the first year of a DOE competition in which the teams were working with a new vehicle platform. Another example: the first-place team, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, succeeded in reducing the greenhouse gas impact of the Explorer by 50% and increasing over-the-road fuel economy by 45%. The team reengineered many components and employed advanced materials, such as an aluminum/steel hybrid frame and a titanium exhaust system. Seven out of the ten teams that competed in the over-the-road event achieved better fuel economy than the stock 2002 Ford Explorer, and two teams managed to exceed the stock Explorer's 1/8-mile acceleration performance.

"The level of reliability in the technologies we're seeing is very impressive, with the students' work now meeting or exceeding that of most production vehicles just a few years ago," explains Bob Larsen, Director of Argonne's Center for Transportation Research. "The students are often able to use off-the-shelf, near-production-level components — such as electric motors and controllers — in the powertrains, which means their technologies can be quickly implemented in large volume at lower costs." Larsen also said that no matter how good the new components and designs are, competitions like FutureTruck are needed to provide a way to test these systems in the field under a wide range of real-life driving conditions.

Argonne's involvement with Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions began in 1988 with the Formula SAE challenge, which had engineering students designing, fabricating, and competing with small formula-style race cars. Since then, Argonne has continued to provide technical and organizational support for a variety of competitions, most involving alternative fuels. The DOE/Argonne involvement with student competitions has also included working with high school students. In the 1994 EV Grand Prix, high school students in the Mid-Atlantic region competed against each other to convert a conventional gasoline-powered car into an electric vehicle. More than 800 students were involved in this project, which combined such diverse educational experiences as auto shop, math, physics, metal shop, journalism, and graphic design.

Over the years, the students' technologies (and the events in which they are tested) have become more and more sophisticated. The teams at FutureTruck 2002 all used advanced hybrid electric design strategies to compete in a series of static and performance events. The events included judging on consumer acceptability, engineering design, acceleration, trailer-towing performance, off-road handling, and on-road fuel economy, as well as on oral presentations. Teams were encouraged to develop technologies that reduced total-energy-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. FutureTruck even includes an event that measures upstream fuel-cycle emissions (pollution resulting from producing and delivering a fuel).

The technologies employed in the DOE competitions have led directly to improvements that may soon be implemented by automobile manufacturers. For example, in the 1999 Ethanol Vehicle Challenge, the team from the University of Texas at Austin developed an onboard distillation system that overcame the chronic cold-weather performance problems associated with ethanol's lower volatility and other properties. The design attracted immediate interest from Ford Motor Company. After further testing and refinements, UT Austin and Ford Motor Company were awarded a patent. If system testing and development proceed as hoped, the system could be a standard feature on production vehicles around the middle of this decade.

This example is dramatic proof that the knowledge and effort invested in organizing student competitions to develop alternative fuel technologies can have an impact in the real world. Results like this one also prove that the cooperation of industry, government, and academia is a great approach to keeping North American technology competitive on a global basis. DOE competitions have helped develop thousands of highly skilled engineers with a greater awareness of advanced and "green" automotive technologies and have prepared them to lead the automobile industry in the 21st Century.