   
ASME is gearing up for another year of the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge (HPVC) as it celebrates 25 years. The competition began on the West Coast in 1983 with a handful of participating teams and schools. Each year, the competition drew an increasing number of student competitors from the western half of the United States. Recognizing the benefit of a national capstone student competition for student members, ASME requested that the competition be expanded. In 2002 the competition was divided into two sites, incorporating the Eastern and Western portions of the United States.
To promote this expansion, an active campaign to solicit student competitors from around North America was conducted via the internet while design scoring was restructured to parallel ABET criteria. Judges were recruited to represent a broader range of engineering experience as well as geographic demographic, including Alabama, Alberta, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. The past few years have seen entries from Puerto Rico, Iran, and Venezuela. In 2007, the first HPVC outside of the United States took place in Maracaibo, Venezuela drawing over 100 attendees and 6 teams.
 The HPVC challenges students to design and race aerodynamic, highly engineered vehicles with elegance, ingenuity, practicality and safety. The vehicles are judged on design, safety and performance. The first stage of the competition is the preparation of a comprehensive design report. The second part of the competition includes design presentation and performance events including a Sprint, Endurance, and Utility Endurance (vehicles designed for every-day transportation for such activities as commuting to work or school, shopping trips, and general transportation.) The 2008 Competitions will continue to engage students around the globe as an opportunity to combine design and innovation in a real world experiment. ASME’s Human Powered Vehicle Challenges not only stimulate student participants, but entries have also garnered the attention of engineering professionals and industry.
The dates and locations of the 2008 HPVCs are listed below. If your school is new to HPVC or considering getting a team together for 2009, you are more than welcome to attend any of the events. For complete details on the Human Powered Vehicle challenge visit: http://www.asme.org/Events/Contests/HPV/Human_Powered_Vehicle.cfm. Students are also encouraged to visit the HPVC Community on ASME’s Communities of Practice (CoP). The HPVC CoP encourages communication between teams, judges, and competition organizers.
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