Being at the proving grounds was exciting. On the third day of competition, I hopped on board one of the buses to take a tour. It was a fascinating tour. We saw all the roads and courses that GM uses to test their vehicles. To me it's just SO exciting to see this place where vehicles are tested, vehicles that will eventually end up in a car lot near me!

The people at the proving grounds were so nice to us. I’m not exactly sure I would be happy if my work space was suddenly invaded with 300 students, but everyone seemed happy that we were there. Our mentor from GM, Bill Beggs, is also just a ton of help. He inspires our whole team to keep trying to do our best.

The first few days of competition were busy with making the last few changes after the safety inspection. Then we were able to get going on the vehicle dynamic events. Stephen, a grad student on our team, was our driver for most of these events, and he was awesome.

Our vehicle architecture is a through-the-road parallel hybrid. We use a turbo diesel engine which allows us to get about 28% better fuel economy. We also use a six-speed manual transmission and a Michelin run-flat tires which give us an additional 5% increase in fuel economy. Overall, we're getting a 48% improvement in fuel economy over the stock Chevy Equinox.

On day three, our big crisis of the competition came; our clutch began slipping. There was nothing to do but replace it. Wisconsin came to our aid by getting their university to send down the part. We knew we didn’t have much time to replace it, so the team just got straight to work. We pulled out the engine and replaced the bad clutch in less than eight hours. It drew quite an audience of onlookers, surprised that we were doing it so quickly.

At the awards ceremony, when they announced us as winners, we were completely surprised. We felt we had a great vehicle, but in competitions like this, every little point counts. Walking up on the stage was a great feeling. It’s such a rush of relief, excitement, happiness, and a whole lot more emotions all coming together.

Our team also took first place for our outreach program. We talk to community groups and K-12 students about the need for more fuel-efficient vehicles, and alternative fuels. We also took home awards for acceleration, consumer acceptability, on-road energy use, and best engineering/fabrication workmanship.

Now that we’re back, we’re getting a lot of media coverage. I’m the outreach coordinator, so I’ve been really busy doing radio interviews, talking to newspapers, etc. Three of our team members graduated in May, and they have taken jobs they got through Challenge X contacts, two of them with General Motors. They are off to take on the real world!

But we’ve still got another year! I’m so excited about year four of the competition. We will get to travel (so much fun!) to several different places and show off our vehicle. And with a winning vehicle, we really feel that we have something to show off!

Check out this video to see the participants in action.