University of Wisconsin Wins FutureTruck Competition

carambola5 writes "No, this isn't a dupe from a year ago. The University of Wisconsin-Madison team has taken the FutureTruck title for the second year in a row. The overall goals of the competition are to modify an existing Ford Explorer (make and model dependant on year) to improve fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or exceeding customer expectations. The University of California-Davis team took 2nd, with Michigan Tech, Georgia Tech, and Penn State following close behind. Speaking as a member of the winning team, I am quite sure that all of the students and advisors from the participating teams are well-deserving of appreciation after those many, many hours of preparation." Too bad Ford isn't actually using any of this hard work. One thing to note: The FutureTruck website still has to be updated with the winning info.

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[pen]

Two WVU students from Greene participating in national competition (Observer-Reporter)
CU team ready to truck into SUV hybrid vehicle competition (Ithaca Journal)

I think that instead of really cool but really expensive and impractical solutions, it would be much more useful (at least in the short term) to just make current designs more efficient. Kudos to the teams using biodiesel.

Re:how abou the cost of building one?

[Zog The Undeniable]

There was a story about a year ago about a team that had redesigned the basic crank arrangement in an engine to get more power from the fuel. A conventional cylinder and crank design has to be carefully optimised so peak cylinder pressure occurs at the right point in the cycle (about 15 degrees after top dead centre) so that as much as possible of the force on the piston can then be translated into turning the crankshaft, without disappearing as heat (which is what happens to the vertical component of the piston force, which is of course resisted by the crankshaft bearings). Unfortunately the useful torque rapidly dimishes when the crank isn't at 90 degrees. The new design put an extra link in the conrod to increase the angle through which maximum torque is developed. There were fairly spectacular increases in economy (or power, if you wanted).

The other major improvement would be fully variable valve timing and lift using solenoids, which allows massive valve overlap (for power) at high revs but very slow idling in traffic. Mechanical variable-valve timing is more limited and is still based around physical cam profiles. The trouble is, both of these ideas, while not especially expensive, add a lot of complexity and increase the number of moving parts. No manufacturer wants to be at the bottom of the reliability surveys.

What Fordreally wants.

[TnkMkr]

Ford does not necessarily implement all the ideas found in the designs of the students for mostly economic reasons. Some parts and solutions still simply cost to much to implement in anything more than a prototype vehicle.

What Ford is really after from these competitions are the students. I was a member of the UW-team in the mid to late nineties when we worked on the futurcar project. Our team took first place for a two-year running back then as well. And I would say about 7 out of the 10 core members were hired and now work in the R&D area for Ford.

Ford is not sponsoring the competition for new tech, they are using it as a cheap (relatively) job training program, and for the cost of a car /truck and few spare parts, Ford gets engineers fresh out of college who already have a few years (give or take) experience frankenstineing together their parts to build new and better cars.

Who do you think is designing and building the hybrid-Escape? The engineers who were leading the future car teams during the competitions back in 96-98.