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2002 Competition
The competition wrapped up Friday night at the Awards Ceremony in the grand ballroom of the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel. For most of the students, their memories of the last several days will last a lifetime – or at least until they start elaborating on the stories they tell their friends and families.
Not
every team scored a trophy, but everybody ended up a winner at one of the most
successful student engineering competitions ever staged. And what a stage it was!
From the desert beauty of Ford’s Arizona Proving Ground, to the world-class track at the California Speedway, to the famous hotel where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere appeared in Pretty Woman, this year’s events were certainly high-profile (and definitely high-tech!). In fact, when it came to successfully implementing advanced automotive technologies, the FutureTruck 2002 teams significantly raised the bar for “future FutureTruckers” to beat.
A
new record for a first year with a new competition vehicle was set when 14 out
of 15 teams were able to run their modified, experimental Ford Explorers during
the competition. This high level of reliability proves that the technologies the
students are using are getting closer and closer to the day when they start rolling
off the assembly lines. Also testifying to this was the fact that three of the
Explorers (those of Michigan Tech, Idaho, and Georgia Tech) qualified as Ultra
Low Emissions Vehicles (ULEVs) during emissions testing by simultaneously controlling
pollutants such as non-methane organic gasses (MNOG), carbon monoxide (CO), and
oxides of nigrogen (NOx). What does that mean_ Well, think of it as taking a big
step toward a “cleaner and greener” automobile – by a sport
utility vehicle, no less! Ten out of the ten schools that entered the Greenhouse
Gas Impact (GHGI) Event achieved a better GHGI level than the stock vehicle —
the University of Wisconsin reduced its GHGI to only 34% of the stock vehicle’s
level!
FutureTruck teams maintained or exceeded the stock vehicle’s performance, even while achieving impressive fuel economy and emissions results. Seven out of 11 teams obtained better fuel economy than the stock 2002 Explorer, including the University of Wisconsin’s 21.85 miles per gallon equivalent (mpge) — a 45% increase in fuel economy over the stock vehicle. Michigan Tech and the University of Idaho beat the stock Explorer in acceleration time (12.037 seconds) in the 1/8-mile acceleration event, with Michigan Tech finishing in 11.238 seconds and Idaho in 11.757 seconds. Demonstrating the robustness of their vehicles, five teams completed the grueling trailer towing event by pulling a 2,000-lb trailer up a 5% grade.
The
team taking home top honors was the University of Wisconsin – Madison, which
scored an impressive 839 points out of a possible 1000. The Wisconsin team members
were obviously very "moo-ved" by their success as they took turns carrying
their inflatable bovine mascot up onto the stage each time they received another
award.
Michigan Tech grabbed the second-place trophy by scoring 693 out of a possible 1,000 points.
The U.S. Department of Energy would like to thank all the students, sponsors, host facilities, faculty, organizers, judges, and other volunteers for their efforts in helping make FutureTruck 2002 one of the most successful in the 15 years that the DOE has sponsored competitions.
Let’s all do it again next year at FutureTruck 2003!
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