Georgia Institute of Technology has been named The EcoCAR Mobility Challenge Year Four champion, taking the lead in the four-year collegiate automotive engineering competition, contest officials announced. Rounding out the top three are Ohio State in second place and University of Alabama in third place.
The competition challenged 11 North American universities to improve the energy efficiency of a 2019 Chevrolet Blazer while balancing emissions, safety and consumer acceptability factors, officials said.
Over the four-year competition, which began in 2018, each team transformed its vehicle from a design concept into a reality by applying advanced propulsion systems, electrification, SAE Level 2 automation, and vehicle connectivity, creating energy efficient, connected and semi-automated vehicles.
The final year challenged teams to test, prove and refine their work from the previous three years, mimicking a real-world automotive product development cycle. The teams applied advanced propulsion systems, electrification, SAE Level 2 automation and vehicle connectivity to improve the energy efficiency of a 2019 Chevrolet Blazer. Each team was scored across multiple dynamic vehicle testing events ranging from energy consumption to acceleration and drive quality, as well as a 175-mile Over the Road Event through the Arizona desert, which tested each vehicle’s thermal management, range and overall durability, contest officials said. Teams also gave five scored presentations to more than 65 judges from government and industry, detailing vehicle designs and subsystems, team management and communications activities and demonstrating the multidisciplinary aspect of their EcoCAR team.
Teams also participated in the Connected Mobility Challenge, which tested Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity capabilities of the Blazer. The vehicles navigated a connected signalized intersection while using real-time Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (I2V) information from the traffic lights.
