MTU Hybrid Blog

South Range Elementary Visit

2010-05-19T14:08:00.003-04:00

When you ask a Kindergartner to design a hybrid vehicle, you get a much different response than from asking a Michigan Tech student. Dr. John Beard, advisor to the Michigan Tech EcoCAR team, visited Mrs. Beard's Kindergarten class at South Range Elementary School in Adams Township to gain a fresh perspective on new designs for the EcoCAR Challenge.

Dr. Beard read "If I Built A Car" by Chris Can Dusen to the class of 22 students. The class was silent as the listened intently to the limitless possibilities of designing your own vehicle. They passed around models of a racecar, ambulance, fire truck, SUV, hybrids, and cars. When Dr. Beard asked the class, "What do you want on your car?" all 22 students tried to talk at once.

The students then had the opportunity to draw what their vehicles would look like. There were a wide variety of ideas, including machine guns, hats, leaves, swimming pools, candy dispensers, wings, and fires. Along with the drawings, the students wrote short descriptions of their vehicles and shared them with the class. To conclude the visit, Dr. Beard described how the EcoCAR team was working to build a vehicle that they designed, and that some day the Kindergarten students would be able to do the same.

Dr. Beard commented, "Teaching non-linear ordinary differential equations is much easier than teaching five-year-olds, especially when you ask 'any questions?' or 'what do you want to see on your car?'"

What a busy week!

2010-04-18T10:45:00.003-04:00

This past week was jam-packed with events for the Michigan Tech EcoCAR Team. The working pace was grueling to start out the week, preparing for our GM Mentor's arrival on Wednesday. The goal was to have the vehicle up and running for his visit. The team was diligent, with most members working until 3am Thursday morning to get the EcoCAR started. Unfortunately, technical difficulties proved too much to overcome.

Thursday brought the Undergraduate Student Expo, providing the team an opportunity to showcase the work that has been completed this year. There were posters displayed and presentations given by most of the Enterprise and Senior Design teams on campus.

Our interview with K-BEAR 102.3 aired today, highlighting the team's progress since the last interview in the fall. We are getting read for an exciting competition, and hope the public will continue to follow our progress.

With only a few weeks until the EcoCAR ships out to Yuma, the team is going to be extremely busy. We are extremely confident in our current position, and will continue to keep everyone posted on our progress!

Enterprise Recruitment Expo

2010-03-27T10:18:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, the EcoCAR Team attended the Enterprise Recruitment Expo on campus. Traffic was a little slow, but many students showed interest in joining the team next semester. Saturday shop hours are open, allowing anyone to come and visit to see the car up close and to meet the members of the team.

MTU Brings Alternative Energy to Middle School

2010-03-25T23:12:00.006-04:00

This morning, three members the Michigan Tech EcoCAR team took a trip up the hill to Houghton Middle School. The goal: teaching students about alternative energy vehicles. An unusually cold day forced activities to stay inside, but that didn't ruin the fun. Mr. Peters' 7th Grade Technology Class had the opportunity to build and test model fuel cell vehicles while learning about the advantages and disadvantages of the different energy sources. The overall experience was beneficial for both the Houghton Middle School and the Michigan Tech students. The team is planning on visiting Mr. Peters' class again next marking period.

2010-03-15T22:09:00.003-04:00

Spring break gave the Michigan Tech EcoCAR team the opportunity to work uninterrupted on the car for the better part of 10 days. Long hours in the lab and in the shop yielded unprecedented productivity. The GM donated vehicle is nearing driving condition once again. Although some technical issues came up throughout the week, the car should be running by the end of the week. Thanks to the long hours from everyone on the team, Michigan Tech will be a real contender at the competition this summer in Yuma.

New members, new lab

2010-02-02T23:59:00.004-05:00

The Michigan Tech EcoCAR Team is starting out fresh this semester. We have four new members joining the team. The new members bring great skills to the team that will ensure our success this semester. We are also fortunate to move into a new lab, complete with a window. The new lab provides more space to move around, adequate power for the HIL computer and an all around better working atmosphere. The new lab is great, but hopefully we will be spending more hands-on time in the shop this semester!

Info Session

2009-10-11T10:18:00.004-04:00

Our on campus outreach this past week was a huge success! Students from many years and majors were present to learn about our program. We started with a brief presentation by Brandon Davis about our EcoCAR Enterprise and the EcoCAR competition. The session concluded with a display of our vehicle and test drives around campus. This was a great opportunity to raise awareness of hybrid vehicle technology and to get more students involved.

MTU EcoCAR on Fast Cadillac

2009-09-29T11:51:00.002-04:00

Michigan Tech's EcoCAR was recently featured in the Fast Cadillac blog. Read the full write-up here: Fast Cadillac

Return From Fall Workshop

2009-09-28T21:48:00.003-04:00

After four workshop-packed days in Boston, the Michigan Tech EcoCAR team is back to Houghton to continue where they left off from Year 1 of the competition. Four members, Chris Lucier, Lucas Meeuwsen, Trever Hassell, and Eric Joseph along with advisor Dr. Wayne Weaver attended the workshop last week where they learned skills varying from advanced Simulink modeling to media relations. These skills will help the team develop their hybrid vehicle over the next two years.

Team Picture

2008-05-15T10:23:00.001-04:00

Looking good!

- Chris Twarog

Racer X

2008-05-14T12:46:00.001-04:00

We were on the way to Emissions testing and had to stop for a nice photo op. We're showing Englishtown that you can save fuel at the race track. Who wants to race for pinks :-)

Huskynox Means Business

2008-05-13T23:39:00.001-04:00

The sun crested the tree line this morning, and the Huskynox was ready and waiting to dominate the competition. The tech inspectors didn't bother with an inspection since the vehicles' reliability and the teams workmanship is well known and respected.

Well, it didn't go quite as scripted but due to some hard work by the team in the pits this bad machine is ready for a good flogging. It is actually behaving quite well, and MTU has already claimed victory in one metric!

Big day tomorrow and Thursday when this country car gets to spend time with some city slickers down in NYC.

- Chris Twarog

So it Begins

2008-05-12T08:25:00.001-04:00

We are all waking up this morning wondering what is in store for us. A plane ride for sure for the ten of us traveling to Newark, NJ our first stop in the ten day road rally to Washington, DC. You know there are ten of traveling, and these ten people know how to make a hybrid car, but I will be in shock if all ten of us show up on time to Newark.
-Radar

The Truck is coming

2008-05-07T17:57:00.001-04:00

36 hours from now a big truck is coming to steal away our prized hybrid.
We can't complain a whole lot since GM is taking us on the "vacation"
highlight of our college careers. The plan is a rigorous road rally
featuring extensive vehicle testing, fancy hotels, enough press releases
to satisfy a national news paper and of course a ton of fun. Our MTU
vehicle has been running great the last few days and Cobasys just signed
off on our new battery as being OK for the journey. Washington DC here we
come!

Todd Cimermancic

Re: Lower Michigan

2008-04-14T16:07:00.001-04:00

The huskynox just died in traffic. A nice guy from GM gave us a ride to
Jims house to get the truck and trailer. We've got 15 hours to fix it
before our media event and we know we're chasing an electrical gremlin

Todd Cimermancic

All nighter?

2008-04-12T00:24:00.001-04:00

Saturday, April 12, 12:02 AM

Well, today has been a sweet bonding day for some of the team. We started the day with class, but luckily were done with that by 1. Then Adam, Todd, Doug and I (Mindy) piled in to a B.A. Ford Fusion rented from the MTU Motorpool for 49 cents a mile. For those of you that follow the Huskynox team you would know that we don't wait for things and when we need something we get it ourselves. So we drove the 158 miles to the closest Suzuki dealer in Escanaba. You may wonder why we went to a Suzuki dealer for Huskynox parts, but that is a very long and frustrating story. So we got the parts we needed got some lunch and stopped at the local Honda dealer (you know you are in the U.P. when its spring, snowing and you are looking at motorcycles) then made the trek back to Houghton. Now mind you last night we got about 11'' of snow and it was snowing and really windy all day today. We got back to Houghton about 8 hours later and went right to the shop where we met Dunda, Woon and Bono. Dunda has been making some awesome refinements to the controls system. We have been here since the end of the road trip installing the parts we picked up and preparing the car to run for our ride and drive event we have tomorrow (Saturday). It is now 12:20 and the car is starting to go back together, its going to be running on time. Sunday Todd and Doug are taking the Huskynox down to the Detroit area for SAE congress and some more media/ ride and drive events. We are keeping the tradition of late nights and having things come down to the last few hours. Well its time to get a few more hours in tonight, we will keep you updated on the awesome things we do. LAAAATERRR!!!!

Update So Far

2008-04-04T12:23:00.001-04:00

So it has been an interesting week. After getting the battery pack back we had a few issues with the Motron communicating with all the components. After swithching out a few fuses and finding a few loose wires everything was talking to everything like it should. After checking everything else on the car we drove the car and tested all the components. We only made it a mile until the gears in the rear differential started skipping. Limping back to the shop we realized that the differential was shot. This being our second rear diff and only having 800 miles on this new one we still are not sure what is the culprit. It seems like once something is fixed something else wants to go wrong.
--
RADAR
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Shop work last weekend

2008-03-02T13:45:00.001-05:00

After spending 7 hours on Friday and 7 hours on Saturday the exhaust is finally complete, and 100% leak free! The new front axle shafts are in and hopefully before Spring Break the engine will be purring again. Wednesday of this week inspection is scheduled for our car. Not being able to drive the vehicle is a little hinder but there is nothing we can do without a battery pack.

RADAR

Busy Week

2008-02-28T15:55:00.000-05:00

So it has been a busy week for us here. The exhaust is slowly starting to get taken care of while we wait for word on the battery situation. The intake has been nearly completed, and now we have switched our focus to fixing the cooling system and the AC lines. Hopefully we can at least have the engine running again by spring break. It will be nice when the car finally gets off the lift.

- RADAR

MTU CHALLENGE-X EQUINOX HYBRID

2008-02-06T20:15:00.001-05:00

Good Evenning:

All is well at ATDC on this MTU Winter Carneval "All Nighter" , Wed. 08
Feb. 06.

check out the mtu web site winter carneval for further details

Ron M. Savela @ ATDC

Battery Troubles

2008-01-28T13:02:00.000-05:00

After realizing our battery is shot we decided to completly tack the rear battery compartment apart and make it more sound proof and cleaner. All the old insulation has been taken out of the battery compartment and our plan is to replace it all with a light weight, waterproof sound deadening material. Also in the battery compartment all the wiring was more organized and we made the area more repair friendly.

On the front half of the vehicle the clock spring was replaced in the steering wheel allowing us to utilize the controls on the steering wheel. Also the radiator has been repaired.

We have a lot of work ahead of us in the next few weeks and hopefully we can replace the battery with our older battery to be able to drive the vehicle while we are waiting for a new battery pack.

RADAR