Congrats to University of Waterloo team: Challenge X winners
A team from the University of Waterloo has won Phase I of the three-year Challenge X competition, which is sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Seventeen teams were handed the challenge last spring of re-engineering a cross-over sports utility vehicle (a 2005 Chevrolet Equinox) to achieve the best fuel economy and lowest emissions possible.
The U of W team was the only Canadian team entered in the competition — the rest were all American — and it was the only team to focus their efforts on fuel cell technology. Mississauga-based Hydrogenics Corp. donated a fuel cell to the cause.
The first phase of the competition was limited to design:
Students will be using the same software that GM uses to model and simulate various drive-train systems, eventually settling on their own vehicle design. Students will be required to do extensive simulation and testing to find the best design for integrating their power-train and vehicle sub-systems. Once the teams have successfully completed the vehicle design process, at the end of year one, they will receive their crossover sport utility vehicle.
Now, with vehicle in hand, the group will spend the next two years working on the real vehicle, turning their design into a usable product. It will be interesting to see the end result.
Big pats on the back for the U of W team. I remember meeting these kids last spring and they were enthusiastic, positive, bright and full of energy. They’re continuing a fine traditional of Canadian dominance in the area of fuel-cell technology.
I wonder though whether GM is giving the other teams a fair shake. Everyone knows that GM has the most aggressive commitment of all vehicle manufacturers to introducing fuel-cell cars. Not to discredit the work of the U of W team, but isn’t GM going into this with a bit of a bias?
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
