July 22, 2024
By Chloe Arrington

The Georgia Tech EcoCAR Team, which includes several students from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has placed second overall in year two of the current four-year Advanced Vehicle Technology Competitions (AVTCs) EcoCAR EV Challenge.

Managed by Argonne National Laboratory and sponsored by the Department of Energy, General Motors, and MathWorks, the EcoCAR EV Challenge is a four-year collegiate engineering program designed to create the next generation of EV talent.

Woodruff School students Matthew Anderson, Prathik Gunreddy, Eric Gustafson, and Mason Shackelford were among the team members who attended this year's competition, held in Arizona earlier this year.

EcoCAR is a Student Competition Center team part of Georgia Tech's Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program, which allows undergraduate and graduate students to participate in long-term, multidisciplinary project teams led by faculty. Over 50 students are on the team and it is advised by Woodruff School faculty members Professor Antonia Antoniou and Director of Graduate Studies and Woodruff Professor Michael Leamy, as well as Professor David Taylor from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The cross-disciplinary competition, among 15 North American universities, gave teams a 2023 Cadillac LYRIQ in the fall of 2023 that they are reengineering through 2026 to complete complex, real-world technical EV challenges. These include enhancing the propulsion system to optimize energy efficiency while maintaining consumer expectations for performance and driving experience.

Shackelford, a rising junior in the Woodruff School, said he joined the EcoCAR team initially to be challenged by problems in the engineering field he is most interested in, automotives. "I wanted to learn all I could about automotives, design and manufacturing, which I knew I would likely not learn in the classroom. What I found, though, is a tight-knit community of individuals highly motivated to work toward the same goal."

Electrical engineering student Katelyn Potts joined the team seeking research experience in clean energy. "As the Equity in Mobility lead, I'm looking forward to working with our stakeholders and developing a product that makes the car more accessible. With this challenge, we have the resources, knowledge, and talented students to make a difference. I'm excited to see what this next year brings," she said.

The team's communications co-lead Suhani Mahajan, a literature, media, and communications student in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, says they are gearing up for year three. "We do not have any details on the competition requirements and deliverables for years three and four, but we have a general idea that we will continue to improve our vehicle's performance, add an element of Equity in Mobility for the stakeholder we have selected (people with brain and spinal cord injuries), and continue outreach efforts within the community."

Team communications co-lead and fellow literature, media, and communications student Natalia Alvarez-Rodriguez initially joined the team to challenge herself to understand communications specifically from a technical standpoint. "After joining, I discovered that there are also a lot of opportunities for exploring what communications looks like on social media and in a professional setting, especially as the competition promotes such close collaboration with industry professionals," she said.  

Georgia Tech has been participating in AVTCs since 1999 and has enjoyed several successes, including an overall first place in the final year of the previous competition cycle in 2022.

This year's result continues the team's success from year one of this cycle, where they received several sub-category awards, including Best EcoCAR Collaboration and 1st Place Propulsion Controls & Modeling Presentation.