Monday, December 1, 2008
A few days before the student body vacated Lawrence for the Thanksgiving holiday, Chris Depcik, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, stood staring at the bare-bones remainder of a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle.
Lou McKown, Downingtown, Penn. senior, left, and Gavin Strunk, Wichita senior, push a stripped 1974 VW Super Beetle toward a tow truck on Nov. 24. As members of a mechanical engineering project called the EcoHawks, McKown and Strunk are taking steps toward transforming the vehicle into a fuel-neutral hybrid vehicle that will use an interchangeable engine block concept to reach a fuel efficiency standard of 500 miles per gallon.
The bug, stripped of its engine, transmission and most of its interior, was covered in a fresh coat of primer. The car is the ongoing project of a small group of mechanical engineering students, known as the EcoHawks, working to design a car that can achieve a fuel efficiency of 500 miles per gallon.
“This is my either brilliant or extremely stupid idea,” Depcik said.
The Ecohawks concept began in February, when Depcik started recruiting students in the School of Engineering. Initially conceived as a competition-oriented undertaking, Depcik said he adapted the idea so students could have more real-world application in engine design.
Depcik’s course, Design Project Option E, was developed after an initial meeting of about 15 or 20 students. He pitched the idea of turning an existing vehicle into a hybrid and the students agreed unanimously. Depcik wrote a course outline and curriculum and submitted it to the school’s administration for approval.
Depcik and his students first laid eyes on the vehicle, donated by Dave Bach, owner of Das Autohaus repair shop, in September. Gavin Strunk, Wichita senior, made the initial contact with Bach.
“Dave had this little jewel just sitting on the lot,” Strunk said.
Lou McKown, Downingtown, Penn., senior, and EcoHawk support team captain, said that the key to achieving the project’s goals, which included a fuel-neutral engine in addition to fuel efficiency, was modular engine design.
“With interchangeable engine blocks, a vehicle can be suited to a geographic region and its native natural resources,” McKown said.
Instead of being locked into a particular fuel — ethanol or biodiesel, for example — engines suited to those fuels could be switched out to respond to changing economic forces or environmental concerns.
On the evening of Nov. 24, Depcik, McKown, Strunk and Bach pushed the Super Beetle hull — without its engine — out of the Das Autohaus garage and onto a tow truck bed. After months in the basic deconstruction stages, the vehicle was being moved to the multi-disciplinary development facility at the Lawrence Municipal Airport.
The vehicle’s development isn’t tied to the semester schedule, or anyone’s graduation date. Students are developing a manual with each step forward, so that future classes can learn from their predecessors’ failures and successes.
In addition to the project’s ongoing nature, Depcik said that the course’s other founding idea was wide-spread involvement. While many mechanical engineering projects require a grasp of technical mathematics and engineering concepts not typically attained until students near the end of their undergraduate careers, Depcik said that the EcoHawks concept provided a way for even freshmen and sophomores to experience real-world applications of classroom material.
“It’s not meant to be a gearhead project,” Depcik said. “I don’t care if you’ve never seen a vehicle. I want you, as a student, to be involved.”
— — Edited by Ramsey Cox
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Comments
irockin (anonymous) says...
These guys are a fraud. 500 MPG! This is ridiculous. VW has tried this setup and couldn't get over 70 MPG. These students are extremely exaggerating the expected gas mileage of this car in order to get more donations and publicity. Maybe someone should ask them to show what bad calculation came up with 500 MPG.
December 1, 2008 at 1:36 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
DrD (anonymous) says...
No, it is not ridiculous. The idea with starting with an older VW Beetle is to give the students a place to learn about vehicles and hybridization while maximizing the potential out of the automobile. Since this is a new program, you have to start from somewhere and instead of a blank canvas, I thought it appropriate to give them a vehicle that can undergo significant improvements.
The end idea is to build enough background in the students through years of learning to create a vehicle from scratch to maximize for fuel economy. Volkswagen has already done this and gotten 235 mpg:
http://www.greencar.com/features/vw-2...
As engine technology gets better, hybridization and batteries get better and we learn how to effectively recover the exhaust energy of the engine, 500 mpg is not unfeasible for the future. Now is a stretch, but the idea is to build a sustainable program that helps students find jobs on the latest technologies.
December 1, 2008 at 1:52 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
irockin (anonymous) says...
The car in the article weighs 639 lbs. The VW bug's bare frame weighs more than that whole car and I’m not even talking about the absurd amount of weight added by converting it to diesel-electric. Also the 235 MPG car in question is not even the same style as what is being built by the eco hawks. They shouldn’t even be compared.
December 1, 2008 at 8:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
DrD (anonymous) says...
I understand that this was comparing apples to oranges; however, as I mentioned in my first comment, the end goal of this class is to build a vehicle from scratch where we can maximize for fuel economy. In this case, the 235 mpg car indicated what could be done using non-hybrid technology available today if you started with a blank slate. Now, another valid question is, would you drive that vehicle? That is something students will have to consider when they get around to designing a new vehicle.
The first step is to learn how to make a hybrid vehicle. Instead of starting from nothing, a VW Bug was chosen because it gives the students something physical to start working on, it is cheap and parts can be readily found if needed. In fact, there are websites devoted to making EVs out of VWs. It also gives the students an avenue to start learning about optimizing the control between the batteries and the engine. Once we squeeze every last drop out of the fuel we can for the Bug and enough background knowledge regarding batteries, motors, construction techniques (carbon fiber), simulations, etc... is accomplished, the students can be given a blank slate and let loose.
December 3, 2008 at 11:12 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
irockin (anonymous) says...
I am not debating the validity of the project. My problem is this team claiming to be building "The 500 MPG car" to every newspaper that will listen. When in reality the Ecohawks have no engineering or science behind that claim. Why not say 1000 MPG, or more! Why stop there? This number was created to mislead the public and companies into funding the Ecohawks. VW with all its resources couldn't achieve even half of the claimed MPG. It's hard for me to believe that some students are going to stumble upon it. I encourage somebody to post equations that prove me wrong but until then I can only see this as a deceptive marketing stunt.
December 3, 2008 at 4:06 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )