dSPACE Helps Universities Tackle Environmental and Energy Challenges

By DE Editors

dSPACE Inc. has volunteered to be a platinum sponsor of EcoCAR 2: Plugging in to the Future, a three-year engineering competition challenging students from 16 North American universities to design a powertrain architecture using electric drive vehicle technology.

dSPACE engineer Vincent Sabatini, previously an EcoCAR 1 Team Leader from Embry Riddle University, demonstrates HIL technology to David Sandalow, assistant secretary for Policy and International Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Karl Stracke, CEO Opel/ Vauxhall General Motors. dSPACE will donate a similar set of tools to EcoCAR 2 teams. Photo courtesy of Roy Feldman.

EcoCAR 2’s mission is to offer a hands-on, real-world experience to educate the next generation of automotive engineers.  

The competition kicks off in the fall of 2011.   Each of the 16 student engineering teams will be given a Chevrolet Malibu, donated by General Motors.   Each team has been challenged to redesign the vehicle’s powertrain to reduce its environmental impact. This must be done without compromising performance, safety and consumer acceptability.

During the three-year program, EcoCAR 2 teams will follow the vehicle development process (VDP) modeled after GM. The VDP serves as a roadmap for the engineering process of designing, building and refining advanced technology vehicles.

As part of this effort, dSPACE will be supplying tools for teams to develop and test their vehicle architectures and control strategies, including hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulators.

“dSPACE is proud to play an even larger role in EcoCAR 2 than we did in EcoCAR 1,” said Kevin Kott, president of dSPACE Inc. “This competition provides a real education for the student engineers and gives dSPACE an opportunity to showcase leading-edge technologies which streamline embedded controls development.”

EcoCAR Director Kristen De La Rosa, Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions Argonne National Laboratory, describes EcoCAR as a strong collaboration of more than two dozen government and industry leaders and 16 top North American universities who have joined forces to tackle our transportation and energy challenges.

“dSPACE’s platinum sponsorship of EcoCAR 2 will provide teams with powerful engineering tools such as MicroAutoBox prototyping units and hardware-in-the-loop simulators, as well as top-notch training, technical support and mentoring,” De La Rosa says.   “dSPACE’s contributions provide real-world training for EcoCAR students with industry-leading engineering tools and practices.   Their tools allow teams to integrate model-based design into their vehicle development process, increasing the efficiency and safety of their powertrain development.”

For more information, visit the EcoCAR 2 site.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.