About
Since 1987, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has sponsored more than 45 advanced vehicle technology competitions through Argonne National Laboratory. These competitions represent a unique coalition of government, industry and academic partners who have joined forces to explore sustainable vehicle solutions. Argonne organizes and operates these competitions to
- Accelerate the development and demonstration of technologies of interest to DOE and the automotive industry
- Provide the automotive industry with a new generation of engineering leaders with highly desirable experience
- Help prepare the market to accept advanced vehicle technologies.
Focusing on graduate and undergraduate engineering students, these competitions target ultra-efficient vehicle designs, hybrid electric vehicles, and alternative fuel vehicles for development, demonstration, and testing. They emphasize current or future vehicle technology; students work with production vehicles (donated by vehicle manufacturers) to improve their energy efficiency and to meet the toughest emissions standards while maintaining performance and functionality. Extensive data are collected to measure the real-world performance of advanced technologies and benchmark their developmental status.
The competitions represent a unique coalition of government and industry aimed at eliminating technical and institutional barriers to acceptance of advanced vehicle technologies and alternative fuels. The competitions are highly valued and supported by automotive manufacturers, suppliers, fuel providers, and the educational community. Auto industry experts judge events, interact with students, and compare technologies. Federal funding for the competitions is heavily leveraged by industry contributions.
Conducting competitions provides significant technical, educational, and promotional benefits to DOE and the nation. More than 16,000 students from more than 600 institutions from the United States, Canada, and Mexico have participated, gaining real-world, hands-on experience tackling the challenges associated with building more fuel-efficient vehicles.
The competitions continue to grow in sophistication and complexity. Both Ford and General Motors have made a commitment to long-term support for these competitions on the basis of their benefits in technology development and demonstration.
Mission Statement:
The Pennsylvania State University’s Advanced Vehicle Technologies (AVT) team is dedicated to looking for new technologies to increase gas mileage, decrease emissions, and most importantly provide students with an experience that they’ll never forget and technical, hands-on skills that will help them in future careers.
Housed in the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute’s Transportation Research Building at The Pennsylvania State University’s University Park Campus is a small group of students working on a massive project. Their challenge is to design a car using new technologies to potentially solve the impending transportation crisis all while taking into considerations the impact to the environment. To do so they, along with 16 other universities have the support of General Motors, the Department of Energy, and Argonne National Lab in the competition known as EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge.
