Plug In America hands out $60,000 CARB money for plug-in hybrid racers
Formula Hybrid - Click above for high-res gallery
Plug in vehicle advocacy group Plug In America has given $15,000 each to four California schools for their 2009 Formula Hybrid race vehicle programs. The money comes from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and will be used to build and design the small plug-in racers (2007 teams and vehicles seen above). The four schools are:
- Cal Poly Pomona
- Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
- UC Irvine
- UCSD
Gallery: Formula Hybrid
[Source: Plug In America]
Photos Copyright 2007 Jay Friedland
PRESS RELEASE:
PLUG IN AMERICA AWARDS GRANTS TO SUPPORT FORMULA HYBRID COMPETITION
Plug In America has awarded grants of $15,000 each to student teams at Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, UC Irvine and UC San Diego to design, build and race plug-in hybrid cars in the 2009 Formula Hybrid International Competition. The grants, intended to encourage engineering innovation at California colleges and universities, were funded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). "We are proud to make these grants to outstanding student teams at Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, UC Irvine, and UCSD," said Jay Friedland, Legislative Director of Plug In America. "We were particularly impressed with the rigor and ingenuity of this year's projects and gratified to see the growing interest in electricity use for transportation."
This year's Formula Hybrid International Competition will be held May 4-6 in Loudon, NH, at the New Hampshire International Speedway. It is organized by the Dartmouth College Thayer School of Engineering.
"We are delighted to see a boost in the number of California schools joining Formula Hybrid this year," said the event's director, Douglas Fraser, a Thayer School of Engineering research engineer. "Once again, students have met the challenge with creativity and innovation, which we now need more than ever. I'm confident that the new teams from Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and UC San Diego, as well the returning team from UC Irvine will add valuable dimension to the competition."
Said Khieu Hoang, Cal Poly Pomona's formula hybrid team captain: "With great minds from students of all majors, we are undertaking the build of our first-year vehicle. Our outstanding faculty advisors, Dr. Caffrey & Dr. Haghi, and great sponsors including Plug In America, will help lead us to victory."
Formula Hybrid is an offshoot of the highly successful Formula SAE®, a program sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers in which collegiate teams design, build and compete with formula racecars. Formula Hybrid originated in 2003 when Dartmouth engineering students began researching their first hybrid racecar in hopes of entering it in that year's Formula SAE competition. They developed a hybrid competition upon learning that the Formula SAE rules had been changed to disallow hybrids.
The competition is a sort of educational hybrid itself, bringing together applications of mechanical and electrical engineering. Both the SAE and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers are sponsors of the program, along with Plug In America and major automakers including Toyota, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors.
Under the program, students design and build an open-wheel, single-seat car that must conform to a strict set of rules, or formulas, that emphasize, encourage, and promote drivetrain innovation and fuel efficiency. In fact, a Formula Hybrid vehicle must use at least 15 percent less gasoline than a comparable standard Formula SAE racecar operated under the same conditions, a goal surpassed by many of the entries. Another guideline involves recycling: unlike Formula SAE, Formula Hybrid teams are encouraged to incorporate used racecar parts rather than build everything from scratch. Many teams see the Formula Hybrid competition as a perfect second-year project for students.
About Plug In America: Plug In America leads the plug-in vehicle movement. The nonprofit organization works to accelerate the shift to plug-in vehicles powered by clean, affordable, domestic electricity to reduce our nation's dependence on petroleum and improve the global environment. For more information: http://www.pluginamerica.org.
About Formula Hybrid: The Formula Hybrid International Competition, created in 2006, invites teams of undergraduate and graduate students to design, build, and race hybrid formula racecars. The event is organized by the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. Founded in 1867, Thayer School unites engineering into a single, flexible department to facilitate innovative research and instruction. www.Formula-Hybrid.org <http://www.formula-hybrid.org>
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GoodCheer 2:55PM (4/10/2009)
PHEV racing?
Ok, help me out here. PHEV is a great solution to get low operating costs in a vehicle, but there's no way around the fact that you are carrying more battery than you need for a series hybrid, and more ICE than you need for a BEV. Since the weight of fuel is going to be negligible compared to the same energy content in batteries, I find it hard to believe that these vehicles wouldn't be faster if
a) They could do the course on battery, and lose the ICE, or
b) They chop the weight of the battery and run as series hybrids for the whole thing.
(If b, then they would have to get super-high power density batteries or even supercaps, or they would toast them in short order... but this is racing after all)
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DaveD 11:14PM (4/10/2009)
LOL It's funny that you should say that. A friend of mine is one of the faculty advisors to the team from the local University that is entered in the competition. About 8 months ago, he asked me to come talk with the kids and share with them some of the things we had learned from trying to build our own production version of a hybrid electric because we were also working on a racing version as a promotion for our new company.
I asked them about the rules/constraints and when they told me I thought for a minute and then started on my "why would anyone set the rules up like that? If they are trying to help you learn to get the most efficiency they should do blah blah blah..." Then I stopped my monologue to look at these kids, yes they're 18-20 year old kids, busting their ass....and I realized I just told them there was no Santa Claus! You should have seen their faces.
I quickly went into a VERY enthusiastic..."but wow, think of all the cool problems you can solve in the real world if you can build a race car with these constraints, blah blah blah". And suddenly they were all smiles again.
LOL I suddenly realized that the point of this is to get the kids involved and thinking of these things. They were debating whether to build a series or parallel hybrid for the race. So rather than tell them my opinions after that, I just answered their questions about why we chose the route we took with our car. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to see how they do.
Jeff 11:19AM (4/12/2009)
I agree that some of the rules are a little silly, especially with regards to rewarding fuel efficiency. They allocate more than enough fuel to complete all the events, and don't award any points for left over fuel. We've competed in every event both years and have always had plenty of fuel left over, and this year they're allowing even more fuel.
I don't think PHEV racing is pointless. First of all, strictly speaking none of these cars are PHEVs, since onboard chargers aren't even allowed, and charging from an external electricity source isn't even allowed during the competition. You can however show up with a full battery pack. They take into account any electrical energy storage, subtract an equivalent amount from your fuel allotment, and this fuel is then the only way to add energy to your car. So while some cars go the electric-heavy route with a substantial energy storage (acting effectively like a PHEV but on just one charge cycle) other cars go with more of a gas-heavy design, using some electrical storage purely as a buffer (very different from a PHEV). A few teams actually do use super caps, including the host team from Dartmouth, you can see their super caps in the photo gallery above.
My team goes with more of PHEV type design. We show up with a full battery pack and run as a 'charge-depleting' hybrid. Our 'range extender' (which doesn't really behave as a typical range extender in this context) is running right from the start. It's a tiny 7hp lawn mower engine, while our car can consume more than twice power that on average. With a lot of powertrain optimization through simulations, we can start the event with a full battery pack, and end it with an empty one, meaning we burnt as little fuel as possible and relied as much as possible on our stored energy.
So
a) If we lost the ICE and ran on batteries alone, we'd probably need about 50% more battery. Since the competition imposes a $ limit to the electrical energy storage (a very real world constraint if you ask me), this isn't possible. Just like you could make a Volt with 300 mile range and no ICE, but it would cost a lot, and vehicle dynamics would suffer big time.
b) If we lost most of our batteries and used the remaining ones merely as a buffer, we'd need an engine that is at least twice as powerful to complete the endurance race at the same speed we did last year. This would burn a lot more fuel obviously.
This kind of work is totally relevant to PHEV development if you ask me. We also have done thermal modeling of our electric motors this year, as a hot motor is often the bottle neck to how fast you can go, and we should also be able to control our left and right motors independently this year.
Here's our website if you're interested:
http://formulahybrid.mcgill.ca/Home.html
DaveD 1:13AM (4/11/2009)
One other thought I have about CARB's involvement and them giving out money for this. I think that part is great. But I can't help but wonder how much total money they give out for EV's/HEV's and bio-fuels? They spend a ton of money on hyping Hydrogen, and propping up those companies. I was just wondering how they split their budget?
I believe they spent/allocated $6.4 million this week to build just 4 hydrogen fueling stations. I wonder what their total spending is across technologies? Hey, Mary claims to be agnostic to all of these different technologies...great. Let's look at her actions.
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