After Gutenberg

Every so often, Mississippi State University pops up in the GCC news, and usually in conjunction with the US Army National Automotive Center. For instance, according to GCC, the US Air Force has funded contracts for the conversion of a conventional one-half ton pickup truck to all-electric operation using an optimized configuration of advanced technologies that are currently available. Challenge X participants also are converting a vehicle using advanced technologies that are currently available.

When last we looked in on Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility, this blog was decrying the rules change that extended the competition for another year because this blog wanted to see Team Fate capture the Grand Prize. For non-gearhead or non-competitive readers, a brief GCC explanation: the University of California Davis team, Team Fate, is “the only team to use plug-in hybrid technology for the energy source within their Challenge X vehicle. Their vehicle has an all-electric range on battery power.”

Now we learn from Green Car Congress that students from Mississippi State University took top honors in Year Three of the competition.

The Mississippi State team designed a through-the-road parallel hybrid electric with a 1.9-liter GM direct injection turbodiesel engine fueled by B20 biodiesel, a 330V NiMH battery pack from Johnson Controls, and a 45 kW Ballard Integrated Power Transaxle. The vehicle achieved a 48% increase in fuel economy over the production 2005 Chevrolet Equinox that served as the basis for all the entries.

The second place vehicle, engineered by students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is also a through-the-road parallel biodiesel electric hybrid design with a 1.9-liter GM diesel turbocharged engine that runs on B20, 228V NiMH battery pack from Johnson Controls, and a 45 kW Ballard transaxle.

The secret sauce for taking first and second place in Year Three of Challenge X would seem to be the Ballard Integrated Power Transaxle that provides 45 kW of power to one set of wheels.

O.K. Time to learn a new catchphrase, WTF (What, in all The ineFfable) is a “through the road” parallel hybrid? From a quick search with (Whooz Yer) Google, we learn that a “through the road” parallel hybrid is the most simple of parallel hybrids, propulsion from internal combustion drives one set of wheels and electric drive, the other set of wheels. It is a configuration similar to that devised by those madcap (Yes, the very same) scientists at the Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory.

As of the date of this post, the current Wikipedia entry for the EV1 notes that the parallel hybrid variant featured 1.3 L turbocharged DTI diesel engine from Isuzu delivering 75 hp, installed in the trunk along with an additional 6.5 hp DC motor/generator; the two motors drove the rear wheels through an electronically controlled transaxle. When combined with the AC induction motor which powered the front wheels, all three power units delivered a total output of 219 hp, accelerating the car to 0-60 mph (96.6 km/h) in 7 seconds. A single tank of diesel fuel could keep the car running for 550 miles with a fuel economy of 80 mpg. A similar technology is used in the 2005 Opel Astra Diesel Hybrid concept.

Winner of the Year Two competition, Virginia Tech, achieved third place overall. Their configuration was “a split parallel hybrid architecture that runs on E85 ethanol with a 2.3-liter turbo spark ignition engine, a 336V Cobasys NiMH pack, a 52 kW Ballard AC Induction Transaxle and an 8 kW MES AC Induction Belt-Alternator/Starter.”

So, Virginia Tech and Mississippi State traded places between Years Two and Three. The battery pack was the same size for the two entries; a difference was in parallel hybrid configuration.

Cobasys Illustration

As previously noted, Enova makes a post-transmission parallel hybrid retrofit, which can be accomplished with little to no modifications to chassis, body, instrument panel, etc. More recently, Cobasys announced that their NiMHax battery packs were available for the Enova retrofit kits.

Interestingly, the entries that took first place and second place, both used a 1.9-liter GM diesel turbocharged engine that runs on B20. Whether or not a correlation exist remains to be seen, but an apparent difference between the two entries was the the size of the advanced battery system, 330V versus 228V. Also, worthy of note, both battery packs were NiMH provided by Johnson Controls.

There has been an ongoing fervent debate in the Yahoo forum, electric vehicles for sale, as to whether a NiMH battery pack such as the ones used in the later EV1 would be sufficient for initial use if General Motors was serious about producing a series hybrid.