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    Welcome to Virginia Tech's EcoCAR Team Website

    What we're trying to do:
    The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is participating in the 2008 – 2011 EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition Series sponsored by General Motors Corporation and the U.S. Department of Energy.  The purpose of this competition is to transform a stock vehicle into a more efficient vehicle while still maintaining consumer acceptability. 

    Year 2 Goals

    Reduce Whell to Wheel (WTW) petroleum consumption with the use of E85
    Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with a more effecient vehicle
    Maintain consumer acceptability and stock appearance
    Increase vehicle effeciency

    Last year’s work consisted of documenting the vehicle design process and hybrid architecture selection results based on vehicle modeling and analysis. This year we're jumping into the build year and building a functional mule vehicle.

    How we plan to do it:
    Our vehicle design chosen is a Range Extended Split Parallel Architecture (SPA) hybrid vehicle that incorporates:

    Vehicle Architecture

    General Motors 2.4L Ecotec E85 engine
    MES belted alternator starter (BAS)
    Siemens rear traction motor (RTM)
    A123 high voltage battery pack

    With these components, the hybrid vehicle has two modes of operation: charge depleting and charge sustaining.  In charge depleting mode, the battery pack is used to power the RTM until a minimum battery state of charge (SOC) is reached.  After the SOC limit is reached the vehicle enters charge sustaining mode in which the engine and RTM will be used in combination to power the vehicle in an efficient manner.

    Rollover the images below for more info on the individual components.