The EnergyRushTV team had been doing some research about the “Challenge X” competition. It didn’t take us long to figure out that we needed to take an up close and personal look at this fascinating event. So last autumn, we did a cross-country tour which started out in Northern California and ended up in Detroit, Michigan.

We’ve been covering the activities of the engineering school at the University of California, Davis for the past couple of years. The man in charge of their alternative vehicle research program is Dr. Andrew Frank, Professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. We’ve met with and interviewed Dr. Frank all over the country, but this time we were interested in the vehicle his team of students was prepping for the Challenge X.

The 2005 Chevrolet Equinox is equipped with state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries for energy storage, and has a 1.5-L Atkinson Spark Ignition engine running on E-85 ethanol. The plug-in hybrid has a continuously variable transmission which was custom-designed by the UC Davis team. The team’s advisor, of course, was Dr. Frank, and the student team leaders were Terrence Williams and Christian Reif. We spent a day at the campus in Davis, California, videotaping the final work on the SUV, including the load-up into the big rig for the journey back to Detroit.

We next met up with the team at the General Motors Proving Grounds in Milford, Michigan, outside of Detroit. The event took place in the first week of June and featured the following universities competing for the top prize:

• Michigan Technological University
• Mississippi State University
• Ohio State University
• Pennsylvania State University
• Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
• San Diego State University
• Texas Tech University
• University of Akron
• University of California – Davis
• University of Michigan
• University of Tennessee
• University of Texas at Austin
• University of Tulsa
• University of Waterloo
• University of Wisconsin – Madison
• Virginia Tech
• West Virginia University

Our team of videographers, reporters and audio technicians had access to the entire event and were able to capture some great images of the “pit” area where the teams of students were working fast and furious on their various alternative vehicles.

The “Challenge X” event headline sponsors were the U. S. Department of Energy and General Motors. The competition was judged on a point system in many different areas by a group of dozens of experts.

You can bet that EnergyRushTV will be there when the next “Challenge X” happens.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Production Logs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.