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It is Day Five at Yuma and the teams are spending all their time intensely focused on dynamic testing and judging. It seems like forever until the Year Two winners will be announced – next Thursday at the San Diego House of Blues, but teams know all their hard work will pay off.
Until then, check out the video below to see how the vehicles fare when faced with the rigorous and critically important AVL DRIVE quality testing and Emissions & Energy Consumption events.
Tags: AVL DRIVE, dynamic testing, Emissions & Energy Consumption, Yuma
Oh, we’re half-way there.
Living on a prayer.
The team is now half-way through year two finals competition. With only two full days left at the GM Proving Grounds, the team is anxiously waiting to pass safety inspection and driving the eMOO before heading to San Diego for presentations.
The morning was spent fixing leaks in the fuel system by using parts from a spare stock vehicle at the grounds. After lunch, the controls team got to work trying to communicate with the front motor controller to get the eMOO drive-able. However, the team quickly learned that they’re not in Wisconsin anymore.
Right before shipment, the team replaced the air-cooled motor with a liquid-cooled one to better prepare the eMOO for the Arizona heat. With the craziness of final exams and all-nighters in the shop, the controls hadn’t been tested yet. The controls team worked until the pits closed at 10 p.m. trying to figure out its communication problem. After a long day, the team decided the component must be faulty and will re-install its original air-cooled motor controller first thing in the morning. The eMOO’s wheels should be spinning in no-time!
In the afternoon, the Outreach Coordinators spent time at Rancho Viejo Elementary School talking to 4th, 5th and 6th graders about engineering, hybrid vehicles, energy and the EcoCAR competition. The students were very interested in the future of hybrid vehicles and many want to become engineers when they grow up! The presentation concluded with Wisconsin’s 4th grade class lined up to get photographed EcoCAR t-shirts.
Wisconsin outreach coordinators line up for a class photo with Rancho Viejo Elementary School 4th graders
For the past two days, the UOIT EcoCAR team has been hard at work preparing our car for testing at the GM Proving Grounds in Yuma, Arizona. With so much work to be done, productive collaboration between our Mechanical, Energy Storage and Controls groups is imperative. We recognized early on that team work is the catalyst to our common goal – a car that promotes sustainable technology and maintains consumer appeal in the areas of performance, utility and safety.
Joe Brennan and Shawn Sandham
At the GM Proving Grounds, each team has been assigned a GM pit coordinator to help us navigate our way around the shop. We were fortunate enough to receive the help of a GM technician from DPGY, Anne Chapman, whose guidance has been invaluable from the offset. After two long days with us, she seems to have developed a good idea of what our team is all about.
“I’m amazed at how well everyone works together. You are so well organized, it’s like you’ve been working together for years. Your coordination rivals that of some professional teams I’ve seen. It’s been a pleasure to watch.”
And it’s been a pleasure for us to be mentored by so many experienced industry professionals. Many thanks to our sponsors, particularly the U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne National Lab and General Motors, without whom we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work together on such an exciting project.
Pierre Hinse and Helen Qin
Congratulations to the first three teams to pass Safety/Tech Inspection. Mississippi State and Penn State officially passed their inspections late last night, and UOIT passed early this morning.
The UOIT team was close to passing earlier, but just kept encountering small problems that seemed to take much more time than expected to remedy. The team said they spent a lot of time wrapping wires in the correct colors of tape and making sure certain areas of the vehicle were labeled with the correct signage.
The Mississippi State team was the first team to pass Safety/Tech Inspections
Mississippi State passed the inspection slightly before Penn State, but the teams actually worked together to solve some of their problems, including controls issues. Teams shared notes and expertise to help each other along.
“Being the first to pass Safety Inspection doesn’t mean we are ahead in the competition,” said Matt Doude, team leader for Mississippi State University. “Our biggest events are still ahead of us and there are so many awesome teams that we have to compete against. It’s going to be tough.”
All the teams have been hard at work, and teams from University of Victoria, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are in the queue for their safety inspection this afternoon.
Tags: EcoCAR, Mississippi State, Penn State, Yuma