Ohio State Students Work to Make Auto Industry Eco-Friendly

Driving electric is the next big thing. At Ohio State University, electric has been the big thing for 20+ years.

Meet the Ohio State University EcoCAR 2 team: a team of 40 undergraduate to Ph.D. students working to redesign and rebuild a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu into an advanced technology vehicle.  The team is competing against 14 other universities in the 3 year student engineering competition, EcoCAR 2: Plugging In to the Future, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. While EcoCAR 2 is only a three-year competition, these challenges, or Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (AVTCs), to redesign a vehicle have been around for nearly 25 years. Ohio State has been participating in them for 20 years.

But the task of redesigning and rebuilding is not easy. In fact, it has been a different and more difficult challenge with each competition.

The Ohio State team is currently building a vehicle even more complex than the advanced vehicles seen on the automotive market today. The architecture, also known as a Parallel-Series Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle, contains two electric drivetrains, a redesigned compressed natural gas (CNG) engine that now runs on ethanol (E85) fuel, and an automated manual transmission, which is being completely engineered by the students.

“EcoCAR has been the best part about being at Ohio State,” said Matt Yard, the team leader. Yard, an engineering graduate student at Ohio State, has been on the team for five years.

“The great part about this competition is the educational experience. EcoCAR has allowed me to take what I learned in the classroom and apply it to a real-life situation. It has been great for the experience to prepare me for a career in the automotive industry.”

The vehicle has the user to two operating modes: charge depleting and charge sustaining. Charge depleting runs fully electric and has a range of about 50miles. Charge sustaining allows the use range-extended miles while running on ethanol fuel, which has a gasoline equivalent rating of the team’s vehicle of nearly 100mpgge.

Join the Ohio State EcoCAR team and Hilliard’s Environmental Sustainability Commission on Saturday, April 26^th, 2014 for a fun and educational celebration of Earth Day. Activities take place in the Roger A. Reynolds Municipal Park (3800 Veterans Memorial Drive) from 10:00 a.m.-Noon.  For additional information, click hereor contact Kim Movshin at kmovshin@hilliardohio.gov.  Admission and activities are free.