If there is one thing the University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT) is good at, it is waiting until the last minute to finish things… Oh yeah, and we build hydrogen fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles as well.
On May 16th the team packed into a couple cars and drove to the airport in Buffalo, embarking on an 11 day sleepless journey to Yuma, Arizona and San Diego, California. The first six days were spent in Yuma, followed by five in San Diego. With temperatures close to 100 degrees Farenheit (that’s about 38 degrees Celcius), the team woke at 5:30 to manage a quick shower and breakfast before a 30 minute drive to GM’s Desert Proving Grounds for 7:00am. Once at the garage, UWAFT and the 15 other teams in the EcoCAR Challenge worked in overdrive for 13-15 hours each day, taking only short breaks for a drink or a quick lunch. Assisted by the proving grounds technicians (TERRRRYYYYYYYY!), GM mentors, safety and technical staff from Argonne National Laboratories and the US Department of Energy, and a host of guest judges from major automotive companies, the teams all rushed to get their vehicles safety-approved to run dynamic events.
Before the competition officially began, the teams all got together for some opening ceremonies, words of guidance, and skits. Some teams wrote songs, others prepared airbands, others little skits. UWAFT? We went out and got cardboard an hour before and wrote the names of various components from the stock version and current version of the vehicle (imagine that… last minute work). We dressed up a team member in a box resembling our car, and another in some testing hardware the team uses to develop its controls. we threw boxes around and made it into the story of how to build a hydrogen car. It was so good that the next two teams to present after us used our cardboard car to make their skits better.
Oh, yeah. We won. Apparently, we are funny. Who’da thunk it.
Of course, in classic UWAFT fashion, we thought we would wait until the last hour of the last day the the grounds to get our vehicle running (Oh look – last minute again). NOW, to the naked eye, this may seem like a bad thing, considering that 10 other teams already were running, but never fear – we have some UWAFT eye underwear to cover you. Of 16 teams in the competition, only UW and the University of Mississippi are taking on the challenge of a fuel cell architecture. Most teams are working on extended range electric vehicles (EREVs) which, though challenging, tend to have a lesser challenge with respect to implementation. This considered, UWAFT was well ahead of the pack, with a significant edge on the Mississippi team, and also achieving operation before some of the non-fuel cell teams. Needless to say, go team.
Aside from the dynamic activities, there were two presentations – Vehicle Design Review and Static Consumer Acceptability – where the teams showcased their workmanship, vehicle features, and implementation of architecture to a panel of fancy-pants judges. Preparation for the presentations made up the remainder of the hours before midnight while in Yuma as the team scrambled to get them ready. For those counting – six days, less than 30 hours of sleep. This would be a trend held close in San Diego where the teams all presented on various topics including mechanical design, electrical design, controls design, outreach progress, and a number of sponsor company award topics. For many this meant 4am bedtime and 8am wake-up calls to get to presentations on time. Each presentation was reviewed by a separate panel of judges including presidents and CEOs of numerous automotive and energy firms.
With the focus of the time in San Diego on presentations, the completion of the presentations allowed team members to finally relax and enjoy their time. Spare time included trips to the hotel gym, swimming, enjoying some sun, mexican food, the zoo, walking around San Diego, a boat cruise of the harbour, and the occasional brew with other team members, other teams, and even some organizers. It was these times that allowed the teams to truly enjoy the warm weather as well as meet other teams and make contacts with the many companies and organizations represented.
At the end of the week awards were given out for many of the categories as well as some special awards for various achievements. UWAFT managed to take home the honours for best engineering and workmanship highlighting the tetris-like integration process the team went through to fit its powertrain into the small vehicle. The team also stood to cheer as Dr. Roydon Fraser, one of the team’s faculty advisers, was awarded the long-term faculty award for his contributions to the team and the competitions – a well-deserved award considering the time and energy Dr. Fraser has put into the team over the years. As for results, the team finished 8th out of 16. Not bad, could be better, but it is a great place to work from going into the final year of the competition… Even better if you recall that 10 teams were able to drive and participate in dynamic events, while we only made our wheels spin on a hoist. Congrats go out to the two other Canadian teams in the competition, UOIT who placed 6th overall with their all-electric vehicle and UVic who placed 4th with their bio diesel EREV.
All-in-all it was a pretty awesome trip. The car is back home now, as is the team, and its time to move on to bigger, better, and badder things. If any of this sounds like something you’d enjoy you should probably stop by the garage (between physics and E3) and check it out – there’s always lots of things to be done and never enough people to do them.
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