Ecocar

The students will have four years to design and build their vehicles.

Plug-in hybrids with E85-powered engines are the powertrain of choice for almost everyone in the EcoCAR 3 challenge.

Figuring out a way for a hybrid powertrain to co-exist with the performance expectations of a classic American muscle car is a challenge that could vex that most experienced automotive engineers. It's a challenge, in fact, being handed to a bunch of college students.

The students spent three years transforming an ordinary Chevy Malibu into a revolutionary vehicle.

The Colorado State team was one of 16 that came to GM's Milford Proving Grounds last week for the final stretch of the EcoCar2 competition, which challenges regular college students who have no automotive experience to do nothing less than reinvent the American car.

In the 47-year-history of the Chevrolet Camaro, there have been countless college-age kids spending a ton of time getting under the hood and souping 'em up. Now, General Motors is adding a twist to the concept by donating 16 Camaros for the EcoCar challenge that puts university teams together to wring out better fuel-efficiency out of various vehicles. No word on whether there will be don

The Chevrolet Camaro gulps down gas. Can a bunch of students turn this iconic sports car into a model of fuel efficiency?

Decked out in enough stickers to make a NASCAR driver jealous, the cars in the EcoCar 2 competition finished year two of their three-year journey last week, with Penn State declared the winner.

The winner of the first year of the EcoCar 2 Challenge is the design for a series-parallel plug-in hybrid electric vehicle from Mississippi State University.

Last fall, Thailand was hit by a devastating flood that damaged parts of 65 of Thailand's 77 provinces, killed 815 people and affected the lives and homes of more than 13 million. Some parts of Bangkok were under over two meters (6.5 feet) of water (PDF) and normal life in the city came to a halt. Those are incredible numbers, but the s

Late last night, students from Virginia Tech University got wind that their E85-burning extended-range electric Equinox was named the overall champ of EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge.

Starting today, students competing in the collegiate engineering competition, EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, began putting their alternative-fuel vehicles through a series of tests for the final time before the winning team is announced on June 17th in Washington, DC.

At the 2011 SAE World Congress in Detroit, MI, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, David Sandalow, announced the official launch of EcoCAR 2: Plugging into the Future. This three-year competition, established by the DOE and General Motors, pits sixteen university teams against each other in a head-to-head battle to construct an

The EcoCAR competitors certainly know how to think big. The engineering students from 16 universities involved in the challenge are only trying to "design and build a greener car of the future" using a Saturn Vue as a starting point. But they also know when to tone the dreams down and think about what can/should be done in the New Year to

GM may have discarded the Saturn brand in the company's bankruptcy, but there are still at least 150 young engineers working hard to turn a Saturn Vue into the most efficient vehicle possible. The engineers are all students from 17 universities who are participating in the EcoCAR challenge, the three-year follow-up to Challenge X.

Last spring, General Motors wrapped up the fou- year Challenge X program where 17 university teams from the United States and Canada competed to design and build a hybrid drive Chevrolet Equinox. At the conclusion of Challenge X, GM announced that the follow-up competition would

click above image for a high-resolution gallery of the GM EcoCar

The Challenge-X student design competition sponsored by General Motors and the Department of Energy is now in the last of a four-year schedule with the final phase coming up in May 2008. The Challenge-X gave teams of engineering students the opportunity to convert a Chevrolet Equinox to an alternative power-train. The teams designed and installed a wide variety of hybrid and alternative fuel power-trains.