Penn State's entry in the Challenge X competition departed May 24 for the General Motors proving ground in Mesa, Ariz. A 75-foot trailer was on hand to carry the vehicle and the team's equipment, spare parts and tools from the garage at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute's Hybrid and Hydrogen Vehicle Research Center. Though the silver Chevrolet Equinox looked unchanged as it was driven onto the car transport -- except for a plethora of sponsor decals adorning the sides -- there is little under the skin that has remained the same since the vehicle, donated by General Motors, arrived at Penn State last summer. Since that time, engineering students have been working to transform the small "crossover" SUV into a hybrid electric vehicle that meets the goals of the competition, a three-year initiative known as Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility.
Last June the Penn State team placed fifth overall at the competition, the result of a year's work entailing extensive modeling and design, report writing, presentations, and the design and fabrication of a trade show booth. This year the competition ramps up from the conceptual phase to hardware implementation.
This year's Challenge X, a Department of Energy and corporate-sponsored advanced vehicle technology competition, pushes university teams to re-engineer their Equinox into a vehicle that is more fuel efficient and cleaner running while maintaining the utility for which the vehicle was originally designed. To meet these goals, the Penn State team has replaced the gasoline V6 engine with a very compact, common rail turbo-diesel engine, according to Matthew Shirk, a graduate student in mechanical engineering and Penn State Challenge X student team leader for this year's competition. The engine is mated to a continuously variable automatic transmission. The engine and transmission are computer controlled, and work together with a powerful electric motor that is powered by a 300-volt lithium ion battery pack.The vehicle is a parallel diesel-electric hybrid with an all-wheel-drive system that works similarly to that found in the stock Equinox.The small engine allows for greater fuel efficiency, while the electric drive components aid the small, less-powerful engine when more power is required.
The competition will begin on Tuesday, May 30, and wrap up on June 7. Dynamic events to test the vehicle's performance will include an autocross-style handling event, a trailer towing event up a dynamometer-simulated "Baker Grade," a low-friction traction event, a fuel economy on-the-road event, an emissions event and more.The students also will make technical presentations to cover in detail the design of the vehicle and its control systems. Eight members of the Penn State team will leave State College on May 30 and will meet their Equinox in Mesa to check over all systems and finish the final touches before competition begins.
Seventeen university teams are scheduled to participate in this year's competition. They are: Michigan Technological University, Mississippi State University, Ohio State University, Penn State, 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 and West Virginia University. For more information, contact the Penn State team's adviser, Dan Haworth, at (814) 863-6269.