GM FYI Blog

By Larry Burns
Vice President, Research & Development and Strategic Planning

Challenge X, which recently concluded its third year at the GM Proving Grounds in Milford, Mich., was an awesome display of automotive ingenuity. The competition, North America’s premier college-level automotive engineering contest, is sponsored by GM and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Challenge X is important because it is helping to prepare the next generation of automotive “techies” to address the challenges facing the auto industry. It also is giving GM new insights into how some of our best and brightest students view the technologies that will drive our future automobiles.

The innovative thinking, creativity, and cutting-edge technology that went into all 17 Challenge X vehicles was truly impressive! While only three teams could win, all of the vehicles represent very forward-thinking approaches to sustainable mobility. This year’s winners are:

• Mississippi State University

• University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Virginia Tech

The teams, in fact, came up with some very exciting concepts that point to the automotive powertrains and fuels of tomorrow — we have everything from alternate fuels like E85 ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen, to a range of propulsion systems that includes hybrids, advanced batteries, plug-in concepts, and fuel cells.

These are some of the same approaches that GM is taking as we work to reduce the automobile’s 98% dependence on petroleum.

Essentially, the teams have been working on the same challenge that GM is addressing: developing high-efficiency, high-performance vehicles that consume less fuel and produce fewer emissions.

GM’s strategy to achieve these goals is to focus on technologies and fuels that will enable our industry to displace large amounts of petroleum and help our nation diversify its energy sources.

One of the best opportunities to achieve this is to increase the use of biofuels. In the U.S., the biofuel with the greatest potential to displace petroleum is ethanol.

Today, there are already more than 6 million E85-capable vehicles on America’s roads, including more than 2 million from GM. If all of these vehicles — along with those that GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler have already committed to produce over the next decade — were to run on E85, we could displace 22 billion gallons of gasoline annually. And if half of all new vehicles that U.S. automakers produced were capable of running on E85, by 2012 we could increase the savings to 37 billion gallons of gasoline per year — and, very importantly, actually reduce America’s gasoline consumption and CO2 emissions.

Beyond the promise of ethanol, another very real opportunity to decrease petroleum consumption and address climate change is with electrically driven vehicles.

Over the last few months, GM has announced our commitment to the electrification of the vehicle with four new hybrids (the Aura, Malibu, Tahoe, and Yukon), a plug-in SUV, and the Chevy Volt.

The vehicles developed by the Challenge X teams are right in line with GM’s strategy and thinking. And the real-world training the team members have gained though this program has given them invaluable engineering experience and made them very marketable to the industry. In fact, GM has already hired 40 full-time engineers or interns from the first two years of the competition, and we intend to extend several offers at the conclusion of this year’s program!

Based on the exciting ideas we have seen thus far, I can’t wait until next year to see what the teams come up with over the final nine months of Challenge X. With the rapid advance of electrical and electronics capabilities and features, I am expecting to see some even more awesome concepts!

Take a look at this video to see the winning team, Mississippi State University, announced. To see more from the week’s events, take a look at Flickr.