Penn State Intercom......May 24, 2001

Team of students to compete
at FutureTruck competition

By Jennifer Hicks
Pennsylvania Transportation Institute

Students from the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute have been invited to bring the Power Lion, a hybrid electric vehicle, to the weeklong 2001 FutureTruck competition starting June 4 at the General Motors Proving Ground in Milford, Mich.

This engineering competition challenges more than 250 students from 15 proposal-selected North American universities to re-engineer a conventional, new, full-size 2000 model Chevrolet Suburban into a low-emission and high-efficiency vehicle. While re-engineering the vehicle, the students must keep the same performance, utility, safety and affordability that consumers seek in a sport utility vehicle.

Students in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Lab class have been exploring cutting-edge automotive technologies such as fuel cells and advanced propulsion systems. They also have been using space-age materials and alternative fuels such as bio-diesel and oxygenated diesel ethanol and hydrogen.

According to Joel Anstrom, graduate assistant in the College of Engineering, the re-engineering project can be compared to a "small car company, where there is a budget, organizational structure, etc." Anstrom said that nearly 50 PTI graduate and undergraduate students have worked on the Power Lion this year. He pointed out that it may take 48 hours to build one vehicle on a manufacturing assembly line, but it takes nearly 20,000 man-hours or 10 man-years to build a prototype vehicle kit like the Power Lion.

Competition awards in more than 25 categories will be announced June 13 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Results will be posted on the FutureTruck Web site at http://futuretruck.home.att.net.

All of the students working on the Power Lion also are members of the Penn State Society of Automotive Engineers and will take the SUV to competition this summer as a Society of Automotive Engineers Team.

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