Ohio State wins EcoCar 3 competition, being the fourth consecutive win for the Buckeyes. Credit: EcoCar 3
Ohio State’s engineering students won their fourth consecutive EcoCar 3 competition Tuesday, an Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors Co.
EcoCar 3 is a four-year collegiate automotive engineering competition where 16 North American universities redesign a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro to further reduce its environmental impact while maintaining its current performance and safety, according to a news release from Ohio State. Ohio State’s team was in first place going into the competition and earned 895 out of 1,000 overall points.
“The biggest challenge for Year Four was really just creating a vehicle that was better than we had in Year Three and being able to get at this performance aspect of a hybrid-electric vehicle while also focusing very heavily on reducing emissions,” Briana Antinoro, co-communications manager for the team, said in the news release. “We get very hands-on. We work with every component within the car.”
On top of the first-place trophy, the team won $33,000 to support the university’s advanced vehicle technology program. It also won 18 awards, including the NSF Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Award, the NSF Outstanding Advisor Award and the first-place NSF Innovation Award.
“This year the students excelled at both the pre-competition deliverable, the oral report, and the presentations,” Ohio State team faculty adviser Shawn Midlam-Mohler said in the news release. “Our students are able to build a great car, but they’re also able to communicate in both written and oral communication – the thought process, the design, the validation – all of that effort that goes into building a car.”
West Virginia University and the University of Alabama took second and third place in the competition, respectively.
