Several of the vehicles were available to be driven at the ChallengeX event. Of the vehicles that were there, I was most interested in driving the University of Waterloo's entry. Most of the teams (12 of the 17 competitors) were using a B20 biodiesel blend as their fuel and all but one of the others used some form of internal combustion with E85 ethanol or reformulated gasoline. But the University of Waterloo team took a different approach.

The Waterloo vehicle was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell (with onboard batteries for backup) and propelled by front and rear electric motors. When I sat down behind the wheel, my guide from the Waterloo team explained that some of the things in the vehicle that are different from the way we're used to driving a car. There were a number of different sounds, coming from the front and the rear, as various systems came online to start the fuel cell system in operation. Matt Stevens from the Waterloo team explained the whole sequence of operation to me this way:

• when you first crank the key, there's no actual sounds as the no engine rank is required (or possible!)
• when the key returns to on from the crank position, first is a relay clicking meaning the battery is connected and the vehicle is ready to drive. Meanwhile the fuel cells are starting up:
• begins with a quiet hiss as the stacks are filling up with up with hydrogen,
• next the recirculation pumps kick on, making a low hum and a very slight vibration,
• last is the air delivery blower kicking up to pump air into the stacks,
• and voila, 65kW of fuel cell stacks ready to deliver power. Process takes about 10 seconds, but the car is ready to drive on battery power as soon as the first click is heard and the car is put into drive.

Image Credit: University of WaterlooI'm not a test driver. And even if I was, this was just a trip around the block of GM's Renaissance Center headquarters, so it was just four right turns and a couple of stops. I wasn't doing any hard maneuvering or acceleration testing, or anything else rigorous like that. Those tests had been conducted during the preceeding week at GM's proving grounds. Still, I think it was a unique opportunity to have the chance to drive a fuel cell vehicle. I may not ever have one in my driveway, but I've had the chance to drive one.

While the sounds were different from what you are likely used to with an internal combustion engine, the vehicle drove no differently than any other vehicle. It responded to the accelerator in the same way as any other vehicle, and it had reasonable pickup (even with four people in the car) and performed very comfortably. If they'd left the radio in and played it during the drive, it might not have been noticable that there was any difference at all.

I'm still uncertain about the ready availability of hydrogen, and the infrastructure to distribute it. But it's quite a thrill to drive something like this, even if it never makes it into mass-scale production. Hydrogen fuel cell power does have its uses, even if we don't see it become a mainstream automotive fuel. And, though hydrogen may be difficult to deploy across North America or Europe, it may be easier to bring it to other parts of the world, where the current fuel infrastructure is much more limited, and there is less commitment to gasoline and related fuels. So, although it's farther out there than the other entries, the design and engineering in this project are worthwhile. And even if we don't have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in our driveways, we're likely to find some specialty applications using hydrogen as part of a comprehensive power scheme in the future. In any case, the engineering efforts of this team (and others) will be put to good use.

This is a multi-year program, which has already gone through two years of evaluations and awards. And, while the initial information I had about the program was that this was the conclusion of the challenge, I learned that there is going to be a fourth year to the program, which will focus on consumer acceptability issues.

The top three programs for this year's competition were Mississipi State (1st place), University of Wisconsin (2nd place), and Virginia Tech (3rd place). The vehicles went through a multi-day testing at GM's proving grounds, and were judged on numerous criteria. More information about the ChallengeX results can be found on GM's FYI blog.

I talked for a bit with Dr. Andrew Frank, the faculty adviser, and with Terrence Wiliams, the project team leader for the team from University of California at Davis, who call themselves Team Fate. Of the 17 teams in ChallengeX, only the team from UC-Davis had a plug-in hybrid vehicle. (Unfortunately, a broken clutch kept them from completing the competition, and their vehicle was not one that was availalbe to be driven.) To help demonstrate their vehicle's ability to travel without needing to use it's internal combustion engine, Team Fate had a demonstration trailer with a solar panel for charging their vehicle (though it wasn't able to be on display with the vehicle). Like the Volt, it was designed to be able to travel a reasonable range based on a charge collected from a plug in source (be it a solar PV array on a garage roof or just a grid-tied circuit) and avoid the use of the fuelled half of the system altogether.

Plug-in Hybrid EquinoxSeveral other ChalengeX vehicles were available to be driven (albeit just a trip around the block at GM's Renaissance Center headquarters in Detroit). Most of the teams (12 of the 17 competitors) used biodiesel (all were using a B20 blend) as their fuel. One team which went a bit farther with their entry, however, was the University of Waterloo's vehicle, which was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, rather than some form of internal combustion engine. (I had the chance to drive that vehicle, and that will be covered in a forthcoming article.)

In addition to the announcement of the winners in this year's stage of the ChallengeX program, I also had an opportunity to meet with a couple of GM executives, who were discussing aspects of GM's forthcoming Volt program, which was the topic of everyone's interest.

Micky Bly, engineering director for GM's hybrid vehicle integration contols, spoke to several bloggers present as a special outreach. Much of the discussion dealt with the issue of batteries for the new Chevrolet Volt. When GM committed to the Volt, the question of where they were going to find the batteries with sufficient technology seemed to be one of the key obstacles to bringing a plug-in hybrid to the marketplace. The week before, GM had announced their selection of two suppliers to work with in moving toward the development of a suitable battery. This is a big step forward in bringing this car to the market, and there were many questions about the program.

The focus is on lithium-ion batteries, which are, esentially, a scaled up version of what you have in your cell phone or your laptop computer, in all likelihood. Lithium-ion batteries have the working charge range and the energy density to serve as the batteries for this vehicle. But, as has been seen in several recent cases, sometimes these batteries can overheat and cause fires, and those problems need to be solved if GM is going to be able to offer a 10 year/100,000 mile warranty on them (which, according to the discusions I had, is what GM is planning).

While no one would give us a release date for the Volt, there is strong enthusiasm for this program among all the people I spoke to. Both Larry Burns (GM's Vice President, Research & Development and Strategic Planning) and Micky Bly spoke about "displacing petroleum." Much of the focus with the new vehicle systems that GM is developing, as well as the ChallengeX entries, are working to reduce the amount of petroleum that is required for transportation.

Other blogs present:

Autoblog Green

Podtech.net

GM-volt.com

Other coverage:

After Gutenberg

Green Car Congress