Is FutureTruck Success Due to Hard Work or a Cow?
Photo Courtesy of Ford
Wisconsin's Future Truck mascot Bessie sits proudly atop the teams winning SUV, the Moolander,.  Inside the truck (insert), team member Jason Peto works on the hybrid's battery pack.

Bessie is a small inflatable cow that goes everywhere the University of Wisconsin-Madison FutureTruck team goes. And frequently they win, as they did this year during a grueling 10-day competition at Ford's Michigan Proving Grounds in June. The same team also won last year's FutureTruck competition, and took fourth place in 2000 and 2001.

A primary goal of the FutureTruck challenge is to lower emissions and achieve at least a 25 percent increase in SUV fuel economy. Entries are also judged on 14 other categories, including greenhouse gas and other emissions, acceleration, off-road performance, dynamic handling, as well as oral design presentation, consumer acceptability and vehicle appearance. Points are awarded in each category, with a perfect total score being 1,000. Wisconsin took first place with 841.7 points, while the University of California, Davis-which won in 2001, and regularly dukes it out with Wisconsin for top standing-came in second this year with 786.9 points. Michigan Technological University was a close third with 755 points.

Wisconsin won the fuel efficiency segment with a 21.2-miles-per- gallon equivalent rating for a 35 percent increase over stock, while reducing greenhouse gases by 39 percent, though the biggest greenhouse gas reduction-48 percent-was achieved by West Virginia University. UC Davis realized a 23 percent fuel economy increase and a 41 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Wisconsin also took best off-road performance and best technical report, while UC Davis was judged best in dynamic handling.

Love-Hate Relationship

Whether Wisconsin's FutureTruck success is due to Bessie the mascot or not is open to question, but there is no doubt about the love-hate relationship the other competing teams have with the miniature bovine that rides in Wisconsin's "Moolander" SUV during competitions, and accompanies the team on-stage during award ceremonies.

Because competitors sometimes conspire against Bessie, the UW team has learned to carry a few extra inflatable cows wherever they go. This year a second was needed when the original Bessie went AWOL and turned up being towed behind another team's vehicle during the off-road portion of the competition. Based on hearsay, the Moolanders determined that Bessie's misfortune was the result of a cownapping. They retaliated against the alleged perpetrators by hanging signs saying, "Bessie is not housebroken," while depositing a few of her droppings in the suspected team's pit.

"We thought it was pretty funny. The people at Michigan Proving Grounds thought it was pretty funny, but the other team didn't quite see the humor in it," said ME senior and Wisconsin team leader Katie Orgish.

Not Rocket Science

Eschewing the Bessie theory, UW advisor Glenn Bower attributes his team's success to the more practical, proper planning and hard work. "A lot of it is rolling up your sleeves and devoting attention to detail," he says.

As an example, he cites the fact that the oil pan on Moolander's retrofitted engine was too deep to fit the allotted space, requiring the students to not only design and machine a replacement, but to redo the internal oil lines as well. "It doesn't sound like rocket science," says Bower, "but it took about two-and-a-half months to do properly."

Ford, a primary sponsor of the competition, donated a stock 2002 Explorer to each of the 15 teams competing in last year's competition. The same teams and trucks squared off against each other again this year. Some teams, such as Wisconsin, completely redid last year's configuration, while others, like UC Davis, fine-tuned their 2002 configuration. And while their approaches to the challenge varied greatly, the one common denominator was that each participating team created some type of hybrid electric vehicle.

The Moolander team swapped last year's 2.5-liter diesel engine for a 1.8-liter diesel, and replaced a custom-made electric motor with a modified Delphi AC induction motor developed for General Motors' EV1 electric vehicle. They also slashed 200 pounds from the 2002 model by ripping out the old steel frame and replacing it with a student designed and-built aluminum frame. With a five-speed manual transmission, and two Toyota Prius nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery packs, the Moolander's parallel hybrid configuration uses the diesel engine as the primary source of power while the electric motor provides an assist. The truck can run independently in either mode or the engine and motor can power the vehicle simultaneously.

"If you leave it in neutral and step on the accelerator you can drive around with just the electric motor at low speeds for short periods of  time, which obviously improves your fuel economy and reduces emissions," says Orgish. "Once you shift into first gear the engine starts."

The UC Davis team took a highly unusual tack in that their truck, dubbed Yosemite, is a plug-in parallel hybrid that functions much like an all-electric vehicle. While most hybrids use the engine not only for power, but to recharge the batteries as well, the Davis truck is plugged into a wall outlet for recharging.

Yosemite is equipped with a Saturn, 1.9-liter, dual overhead-cam engine converted to run on ethanol, as well as large NiMH battery pack. With a 50-mile range, "The electric motor has enough power to drive around town without having to engage the ethanol engine," says ME grad student and Davis team leader Joey Holdener. ORdinarily, the vehicle is launched electrically. The engine kicks in at about 25 mph and maintains enough of the load so that the battery charge does not drop below 20 percent.

The Davis team chose the plug-in configuration because "green modeling demonstrates that the use of electricity from the grid is an efficient means of getting power to the vehicle, and when you run on electricity there are zero tailpipe emissions," says Holdener. He acknowledges, however, that the configuration "requires a large battery back, so there are cost and weight considerations that need to be taken into account."

Yosemite goes through its off-road paces, and UC Davis team members Claire Vachette and Christopher Carde run a diagnostic test.

Preparing these vehicles for competition requires a huge commitment of time and effort.

The Wisconsin team consists of some 40 students, with a hardcore group of about 15, "who really dedicate a serious amount of time to the project," says team leader Orgish, who has been on the team since her freshman year. As for what she considers serious, the ME senior says, "On average we put in almost 40 hours a week."

Similarly, Holdener of Davis says, "I worked on the vehicle very near full-time for six months. Then, the month before competition-crunch time-it was 24/7." And, he adds, with some 25 regular team members, "I'm definitely not the only one."

But in the end, the effort is worthwhile. "I've definitely had a lot of fun, and have gotten more practical experience being on the team than I ever would have acquired in my engineering classes," says Orgish. "I'm currently working as an intern for Ford Motor Co. and I'm pretty certain if I hadn't had the FutureTruck experience getting this internship would have been either much more difficult or impossible."

Holdener also finds that "Future truck is a great learning experience. You have classes and coursework and learn the fundamentals and theory behind engineering but in many cases you don't get to apply it, and that's what student projects give you-hands-on experience. As one of my fellow students said, 'It really makes you an engineer.'"