The United States Department of Energy, General Motors Corp. and Natural Resources Canada Wednesday announced the 17 teams selected to participate in EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, a collegiate vehicle engineering competition set to begin in the fall of 2008.

EcoCAR will challenge university engineering students across North America to re-engineer a Saturn Vue to achieve improved fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, while retaining the vehicle’s performance and consumer appeal.

Students will design and build advanced propulsion systems that are based on the vehicle categories from the California Air Resources Board zero emissions vehicle regulations. They will be encouraged to explore a variety of cutting-edge clean vehicle solutions, including full-function electric, range-extended electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell technologies. In addition, they will incorporate lightweight materials into the vehicles, improve aerodynamics and utilize alternative fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel and hydrogen.

Michigan Technological University in Houghton was the only Michigan school selected.

The other schools selected were Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.; Georgia Tech in Atlanta; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss.; Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Mo.; North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C.; Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa.; Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind.;
Texas Tech University in Lubbock; University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Ontario; University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia; University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.; and West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.V.

During the three-year program, General Motors will provide production vehicles, vehicle components, seed money, technical mentoring and operational support. The U.S. Department of Energy and its research and development facility, Argonne National Laboratory, will provide competition management, team evaluation and technical and logistical support. Through sponsoring such advanced vehicle engineering competitions, GM and the U.S. Department of Energy are developing the next generation of scientists and engineers.

In the first year, teams will develop their vehicle designs through the use of GM’s Global Vehicle Development Process -- the modeling and simulation process currently used to develop all of GM’s vehicles. Sophisticated hardware in the loop and software in the loop systems will be utilized, and teams will be challenged to model and simulate the integration of their subsystems into the overall vehicle design. The emphasis is on optimizing a practical, realizable solution that will meet the goals of the competition.

During the second and third years of the competition, students will build the vehicle and continue to refine, test, and improve vehicle operation. At the end of Years Two and Three, the re-engineered student vehicle prototypes will compete in a week-long competition of engineering tests. These tests will be similar to the tests GM conducts to determine a prototype’s readiness for production. The Greenhouse gas, Regulated Emissions, and Energy in Transportation (GREET) model, developed at Argonne National Laboratory, will be used to assess a well-to-wheel analysis of the greenhouse gas impacts of each technology approach the teams select.

In addition to sponsorship from GM and DOE, Platinum sponsor Government of Canada is providing extensive operational support. The other Platinum sponsors, Dspace, National Instruments, The MathWorks and Freescale Semiconductor are providing critical software and hardware components.

Gold sponsors are The National Science Foundation and MotoTron Corp. Silver sponsors are: SnapOn Tools and Renewable Fuels Association. Bronze sponsors are: Delphi Corp., EcoMotors, CarSim and Bosch.

Additional information about EcoCAR is available on the Web at www.ecoCARchallenge.org.

Mississippi State was also Wednesday announced the winner of the four-year GM-DOE Challenge X program, in which 17 university teams from the U.S. and Canada to reengineer a Chevrolet Equinox to improve its mileage and carbon footprint.

The Mississippi State team designed a through-the-road parallel hybrid electric vehicle powered by a 1.9L GM direct injection turbo diesel engine fueled by B20 biodiesel. It achieved a 38 percent increase in fuel economy over the production vehicle on a modified urban test cycle.

The second place vehicle, engineered by students at the University of Wisconsin is a through-the-road parallel hybrid electric vehicle with a 1.9L GM direct injection turbo diesel engine fueled by B20. Ohio State University was awarded third place for its power-split hybrid electric vehicle powered by a 1.9L GM direct injection turbo diesel engine and fueled by B20.

Other highlights: the University of California Davis used plug-in hybrid technology, while the University of Waterloo used a hydrogen fuel cell and Pennsylvania State University, Texas Tech University and the University of Tulsa used hydrogen as a secondary propulsion source. Also, West Virginia University and the University of Akron used ultracapacitors to source high levels of power for short periods of time and recapture energy from braking.

Michigan Tech and the University of Michigan participated in Challenge X.