OSU ECOCAR 2 Team to attend the 2012 DC Auto Show

The Ohio State University EcoCAR Team will be attending the 2012 DC Auto Show on January 26 for the Public Policy Preview Day. The Ohio State University is currently participating in 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 the vehicle’s original performance, safety and consumer acceptability.

The three-year competition will follow a real-world vehicle development process modeled after the process used by General Motors. 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 Ohio State team will receive 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. General Motors recently presented each team with a $25,000 check to begin Year One. 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 Ohio State 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 Ohio State 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.”

On January 26, the Ohio State EcoCAR team will be at the Auto Show for the Public Policy Preview Day. In addition, student engineers will be available on site to answer any questions about their previous EcoCAR vehicle or the EcoCAR 2 competition.

Additional information about EcoCAR 2 is available on the Web at www.ecocar2.org and the EcoCAR 2 blog at www.green-garage.org.