OSU EcoCAR 2 team kicks off new three-year, national competition
The Ohio State University EcoCAR Team will hold a formal kickoff event September 29 at the Center for Automotive Research for EcoCAR 2: Plugging in to the Future, a three-year, student engineering competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. The competition challenges students from 15 universities across North America to redesign a 2013 Chevy Malibu to be more efficient and use less petroleum while maintaining performance, safety and consumer acceptability.
Event Schedule:
- 1:10- Welcome, Remarks from Giorgio Rizzoni and Shawn Midlam-Mohler, co-faculty advisors
- 1:15- Remarks from competition sponsor, GM mentor Kevin Storch
- 1:20- Remarks from College of Engineering representative, David Tomasko, associate dean for undergraduate education and student services
- 1:25- Q+A with Giorgio Rizzoni, Shawn Midlam-Mohler, Kevin Storch, David Tomasko and EcoCAR 2 students
- 1:35- Photo opportunity/individual media interview
Kevin Storch, a General Motors engineer and Ohio State's EcoCAR 2 mentor, will be meeting the entire OSU EcoCAR 2 team for the first time at the kickoff and will present the team with a $25,000 check from General Motors.
The event will be held from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Student Projects Building at the Center for Automotive Research, located at 930 Kinnear Road, just west of Ohio State's main campus. Parking is available in lots in the back and to the east of the center.
In addition to the $25,000 from General Motors, the Ohio State team will receive other donations and seed money to participate in EcoCAR 2, which will provide more than $105,000 to every school over the next three years to sponsor engineering graduate research and outreach/business graduate/undergraduate research. MathWorks will provide nearly $5 million (commercial value) in engineering software products for the teams. Siemens will also support the teams by providing nearly $27.8 million (commercial value) in computer-aided design software. All of the seed money and the donated software products are leveraged heavily by Ohio State’s College of Engineering and Center for Automotive Research to create a truly exceptional experience for students.
The three-year competition will follow a real-world vehicle development process modeled after GM's. During the first year of competition, teams will design and model their proposed plan for the vehicle. In the second year, the teams will receive the vehicle and begin to integrate the powertrains they designed in year one. Finally, in year three, the teams will work on refining their vehicles to be showroom ready.
The OSU EcoCAR 2 Team is ready to begin a new competition, especially with the momentum from the last competition. EcoCAR: The NeXT Challenge, which ended this past June, required students to explore different powertrain architectures for a GM SUV. The OSU EcoCAR Team finished 1st in year one, 5th in year two and 2nd in year three of the NeXT Challenge and received numerous event awards and cash prizes.
With one of the highest scoring proposals for EcoCAR 2, The Ohio State University students are looking forward to being a competitive team.“Through the EcoCAR competition, we have learned what works and what does not work,” said Katherine Bovee, Ohio State’s engineering team leader for EcoCAR 2. “I think that being a part of the EcoCAR 2 competition will give the team a chance to start a whole new project and end with an even better result.”
Additional information about EcoCAR 2 is available on the Web at www.ecocar2.org and the EcoCAR 2 blog at www.green-garage.org.
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