I attend Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly University of MIssouri-Rolla), a premier engineering school and we were one of 17 schools chosen from over 300 American, Canadian, and Mexican universities chosen for the ECOcar Challenge, a 3-year competetion to build alternative energy vehicles. Last year (the first of the 3), we competed to see which alternative energy we would be assigned and we were chosen to build a hydrogen fuel cell car!

now, this competetion is huge. It is hosted by the Department of Defense and GM actually gave each team a 2009 Saturn Vue to modify! we recieved the car a couple weeks ago an the school actually built us a shop to work on it in (complete with a 2-post lift that is to be installed within the next month or 2). the problem is, the majority of the team are grad students from various engineering fields. normally that wouldnt be a problem, but they are nearly ALL theory based and barely any of the can even change their own oil let alone rip apart a brand new car and build it from scratch. that's where I come in.

I have been named the team's Vehicle Integration Team Leader and shop manager! I am so damn happy i get excited every time i think about it! i just thought you guys would hear about it so when we start getting some work done on it pretty soon, i will pe posting up a build thread about it and updating it as often as i can!

Keep us posted!  There are a few EV and hybrid engineers I know that lurk here that might chip in.

Posted By smartbomb on 11-05-2009 07:51 AM

Keep us posted!  There are a few EV and hybrid engineers I know that lurk here that might chip in.

Will do Mike!  we cant start work tearing the car down until after we get it inspected for licensing next week, but after that it will look like it blew up within a week!  this is what we have to work with, a pre-production Saturn VUE hybrid :

we will eventually be having it wrapped in vinyl to draw a little more attention than it does now.

The shop stuff is the most exciting thing going on now, Snap-On tools gave us a nice big customized toolbox with quite a few tools in it.  here is a picture of it being used at a PR event we had at our complex where we have our shop, the hydrogen filling station and our (future) design office:

and a nice one of our shop with a bunch of cars from the local GM dealership in front of it for that event:

Stap-On is awesome for giving us that toobox, but it doesnt even come close to the amount of tools we need so we just had $200,000 approved for our team, much of that will be going to outfitting our shop with everything we need.  i am actually about to go pick up a huge load of craftsman tools from the Sears outlet we have in town, hopefully my truck is big enough to carry it all! if not, i am very ok with having to make more than one trip 

oh and make sure you check out our website, its ecocarchallenge.mst.edu
our (under contruction) blog is ecocar.mst.edu

and the website for the competetion itself is http://www.ecocarchallenge.org/

The website that all the teams in the competetion are putting information up on is http://www.green-garage.org/

Congrats to your team!  Kick the ass of the grad students and make them get dirty!  Make sure they don't strip any nuts and bolts though....

I did my grad research in fuel cell systems and I'm not a big fan of them for transportation, one of the reasons being that people wanted to ONLY use a fuel cell to provide the electricity to power the car.  The major issue with this that the typical city drive cycle involves a lot of acceleration and decelerating, so transients in power required.  I'm not sure how much has changed, but fuel cell systems generally don't like to rapidily increase power output to meet the demand on acceleration.

There's also the cold start-up issue with the time required.  So I always thought it made perfect sense to make a 2-mode hybrid.  Use the battery to handle cold start-up and transients, and just let the fuel cell operate at an optimum point and also not require of it rapid transients in power output.  So you'll need those controls systems guys to work on the algorithms to optimize the interaction between the battery system and fuel cell system.

So, uh, I basically see it working somewhat similar to the GM volt, but with a fuel cell instead of an engine.  But your team should do a full QFD type thing to figure out how your system should work

Posted By spdracerut on 11-07-2009 11:56 AM

Congrats to your team!  Kick the ass of the grad students and make them get dirty!  Make sure they don't strip any nuts and bolts though....

I did my grad research in fuel cell systems and I'm not a big fan of them for transportation, one of the reasons being that people wanted to ONLY use a fuel cell to provide the electricity to power the car.  The major issue with this that the typical city drive cycle involves a lot of acceleration and decelerating, so transients in power required.  I'm not sure how much has changed, but fuel cell systems generally don't like to rapidily increase power output to meet the demand on acceleration.

There's also the cold start-up issue with the time required.  So I always thought it made perfect sense to make a 2-mode hybrid.  Use the battery to handle cold start-up and transients, and just let the fuel cell operate at an optimum point and also not require of it rapid transients in power output.  So you'll need those controls systems guys to work on the algorithms to optimize the interaction between the battery system and fuel cell system.

So, uh, I basically see it working somewhat similar to the GM volt, but with a fuel cell instead of an engine.  But your team should do a full QFD type thing to figure out how your system should work

funny enough, that is exactly what we are doing.  with a full charge from the grid, we expect to get 20-40 miles with no hydrogen usage.  also, next year (the third and final for the competetion, focused on perfecting and tweaking the vehicle) we will be trying to integrate a regenerative braking system onto the vehicle. on a related note, all of they hydrogen that powers our vehicle will be generated by electrolysis powered by vertical-axis wind turbines and PV solar cells installed on the roof of the shop

Regenerative braking should already be part of the system.  In pure electric mode, might want to model the system similar to the Mini E.  Or figure out what the Tesla does.  So I guess your team just needs to figure out how to tweak the system.  Or maybe generate a simulation to figure out your optimum strategy. 

It's crazy that the F1 teams using KERS devised simulations to optimize the use of the KERS systems (where/when/how long) for each track to minimize lap times.

Stay tuned, i'm going to have a few updates in the next couple days, i just have to find out what i'm allowed to show to the public due to non-disclosure agreements i have with GM and A123 (battery manufacturer)

well, we have had a few work days now and the interior is completely stripped aside from the dash.  i'm not really sure if i'm allowed to show GM's battery or not because this car was never released to the public so i will hold the pictures until i find out for sure.  work has been slowed by trying to get the salvage title taken off the car and get it licensed before we tear it apart and modify it, but it is still techically on schedule.

sorry guys, no pictures at the moment, there are some things in the shop i just cant show you right now due to my nondisclosure agreement with A123 (battery manufacturer) and GM.  the car is coming along well though.  it is almost completely stripped and is sitting outside the shop under a tarp while the electricity and 2-post lift gets installed in the shop!  the engine comes out incredibly easy in these vehicles, you just need to remove a few little things in the way then take out 4-bolts on the cradle and drop it out!  that will be happening shortly.  I have a feeling i'll be in the shop during the lift install waiting for the moment they finish so i can get this thing in the air lol. 

in other news, the fuel cell came in (one of the things i cant take pictures of right now) as well as the majority of our wiring.  as far as our shop goes, because it will be holding an experimental hydrogen-powered vehicle, we are required to adhere to very specific stipulations regarding the electrical installation inside.  we are even going as far as to use a blast-proof breaker box that is the same as is used on oil rigs!  Thankfully, Killark was kind enough to furnish our entire shop with around $65,000 in electrical components!  (Again, thank you so much guys!)

Stay tuned, because i will have pictures next time (REALLY!) as well as possibly some insight to how our car will look when it's done.

ok, update time, after a LONG while. 

i'll start out with the part that most of you are probably most interested in, our new wheels!

We have been looking for some lightweight wheels to reduce our unsprung weight and rotational mass to increase our efficiency and handling.  Because of this, we got in contact with Enkei, who has decided to help us out with 5 of their 17x7 5x114.3 rpf1's!  of course, not only was i thrilled from an engineering aspect, but being a fan of the rpf1, i was elated.



sexy lightweight racing wheel versus ugly, heavy, stock chrome wheel.  a significant improvement!

in other news, we have gotten a LOT done since the last update.

we removed the stock gas hybrid motor, the stock fuel tank, and everything else associated with gasoline-powered propulsion.  we wont be using that anymore!

car on lift and front clip off ready for the motor to drop

the team getting ready to hit it hard and pull the motor.

me working the hydraulic table (man that thing has come in handy quite a bit!) ready to lower the heart out of the car.

finally out!  it took about 8 hours of work that day plus the months of lead-up to get ready for it.

the fuel cell stack and drive motor are in the electrical engineering building for testing on one of the electic dyno's we have in there.

(fuel cell stack on the engine dyno)

we have also recieved our hydrogen storage tanks, and it looked like a bomb when we got it!

tell me you wouldnt give this a second look if you were looking through shipping containers!

those things are HUGE so we had to make some space in the floor of the vehicle. 


now we have a gaping hole that we have to fill with something...

...here is that something.  this is the upper sheild we will be installing as a barrier between the occupants and the storage tanks.

and here are the battery boxes that will hold the 5 A123 cells that weigh close to 66lbs each.  they are ready to be installed and are just waiting for the hydrogen tanks to go in.

stay tuned for the next update, i promise it will be a LOT quicker than this one!

Definitely keep us posted on the updates.  Great Build!