What is the EcoCAR Challenge?

The EcoCAR Challenge is a three-year competition that builds on the 19-year history of the Department of Energy (DOE) advanced vehicle technology competitions by giving engineering students the chance to design and build advanced vehicles that demonstrate leading-edge automotive technologies, with the goal of minimizing the environmental impact of personal transportation and illustrating pathways to a sustainable transportation future.

The three-year competition involves converting a GM-donated vehicle into an hybrid, fuel cell, or electric vehicle while maintaining comfort and operation on the road. The first year of the competition involves designing and modeling a proposed vehicle architecture and related component selection. Year two begins with General Motors donating a new Saturn Vue to each school in the second year of the competition (Fall 2009). The second and third year involve integrating and improving the design proposed from year one.

Check out the official EcoCAR Challenge website.

Read about Challenge X, the predecessor to EcoCAR.

UVic's Design

UVic is designing a plug-in hybrid drive vehicle, which is expected to improve fuel consumption, petroleum energy use and and levels of harmful emissions over the stock vehicle. The team's design process includes detailed vehicle modeling using PSAT, Simulink and Matlab based tools. Component packaging and integration tasks will be performed using a GM provided CAD model of the stock vehicle in Unigraphics NX. Control strategy design and optimization will be performed using a dSpace 'hardware-in-the-loop' simulator which has the ability to emulate every sensor and actuator on the vehicle.

We Need Volunteers!

EcoCAR is based on a real-world integrated vehicle design and development process. Teams of engineers from the selected schools will develop their vehicles following a modified GM Global Vehicle Development Process (GVDP) for each phase of the three-year competition. The skills learned in this competition will be invaluable for participating students and their future careers.

If you are interested in joining or learning more about the team, please contact us at the email address provided on the Contact page. We are continuously looking for Mechanical, Electrical, Software, Computer Engineering and Computer Science students.

Due to the significant size of this project and the help that is required, we are actively seeking volunteers from the engineering department and students from other faculties to volunteer for the coordination and completion of simple tasks related to the business branch within the EcoCAR challenge, particularly in the following areas:

Education: Including school presentations and events promoting the EcoCAR challenge and its benefits to K-12 students.

Outreach: Promoting the competition and its positive effects to the general public through press releases, media interviews, and presentations in the community.

Corporate Relations: Aiding with securing corporate funding from corporations and businesses who share EcoCAR’s goals.

For each of the aforementioned business subsections, we are looking to establish a team of 4 to 5 members, including one team leader who oversees and coordinates the team’s activities. Currently, we have recruited team lead volunteers for both the Outreach and Corporate Relations teams, so we are seeking a team lead volunteer for the Education division, and regular team members for all 3 divisions.