Everyone knows how bad the average big city urban high school is, right? No way students could ever accomplish anything, well, except when they do. West Philadelphia High School is one of those places where you wouldn’t expect much, but the students under the direction of Simon Hauger, an ex-GE engineer, built two cars to compete for the Automotive X Prize. Going up against teams from around the world with far greater resources (the only high school!), the students were real contenders, and one of their cars, the EVX Focus, paired an electric motor with a Harley Davidson V-Twin, not something you see every day and not the kind of thing you would expect to come out of an inner city school like West Philly.
The students didn’t sit back and listen to lectures, this was real hands on learning, where they experienced the real challenges of solving problems under time pressure as they worked toward the goal: to construct a vehicle capable of getting 100 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGe) during normal driving. The class was engaging in “Project Based Learning,” taking on real world problems and using critical thinking to come up with and then implement solutions, exactly what it takes to succeed in the world after school.
There are two X-Prize classes of cars the teams can build and the students built one for each class. The Ford Focus was their entry in the class for: A mainstream car that seats at least four passengers, has four wheels and has a minimum 200 mile range. This was the one where the Harley V-Twin was mounted under the hood.
West Philly High was one of 111 teams to start and made it into the final 30 when they traveled to Michigan to compete. A recent PBS Frontline episode covered the competition as seen by the high school team and showed how well they did.
One of the eventual winners in the Alternative class, was a Peraves E-Tracer, an enclosed electric motorcycle many of you are familiar with.
This is the kind of learning I really like to see, a lot less talk, a lot more action, combined with some out of the box configurations, would you really expect to see a Harley under the hood in the X-Prize competition? If you have the time, watching the Frontline episode is pretty interesting. Hats off to the team and to Simon Hauger for putting something like this into the realm of possibility for students who would otherwise be just another statistic.
Thanks to “decline” one of our readers for the tip.
Link: PBS Frontline
Video below:
mikesundrop says
This is a great activity for West Philadelphia kids in addition to chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ and all cool and shootin some B-ball outside of the school
HoughMade says
Excellent. I salute you.
Bigshankhank says
I wondered how long it would take for that song to come up in the comments. Well done sir.
todd says
This is great. I’d hope that other schools see the value in this sort of education. Alas, there is possibly too much emphasis on the three “R’s” of education; Read, Riting, and ‘Rithmatic.
The whole “100mpg” car doesn’t make much sense to me however. The EPA finds that cars only travel on average 7,500 miles per year. If you replace the US new car average 33.8 mpg (222 gallons/year) with a 100mpg car you’d save 147 gallons per year. OK.
I think the real place to start looking for fuel savings is in medium duty commercial truck fleets. Trucks average 30,000 miles per year and average only 8ish mpg. That’s 3750 gallons/year. If these prizes focused on getting these trucks up to 33.8mpg like a car you’d be saving 2862 gallons of fuel per year. At $4/gallon (conservative) that’s a $11450 savings every year. Pretty much 20 times more fuel savings than a 100mpg car.
They teach economics in school too, right? Maybe not for people in charge of the Automotive X Prize.
-todd
Paulinator says
…interesting. Very interesting.
Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" says
The misunderstanding of the relative gains is pretty much universal. I’ve many times tried to explain to people why improving trucks and buses from 4 or 5 mpg to 7 or 8 mpg is much more beneficial than making already fuel efficient economy cars even more so, but in this post I wasn’t addressing that issue, I was trying to focus on the project built by these kids, not the fuel economy goal itself. If the X-Prize folks want to create multimillion dollar prizes, this school is smart to give it a shot and the students benefit by learning how to build the cars in pursuit of it.
The project based learning involved here is a mixed bag. If you want to learn some things in depth, you eventually have to crack a book and get a grasp of the concepts involved. No amount of wrench and screwdriver work will teach anyone what they need to know about digital electronics at a high level, but these students benefit a great deal because the other option was possibly dropping out and hanging out. Here, they might get the urge to learn a lot more and give those books a try.
Paulinator says
This experience will definitely leave a mark on all the participants because the kids actually got a fourth R in their curriculum…R-ounded. Cheers to the organizers and facilitators for a job well done. North America needs more like it.
I'm not with stupid ^ says
Clearly they’d get just loads more entries if the contest involved only heavy trucks – those are dirt cheap, easy, and safe to buy, modify, and test, right?
I guess they don’t teach the concept of “scaling experiments” at Smug Comment U.
GenWaylaid says
Yeah, big rigs are either going to be a really big, expensive competition or a really small, cheap one.
You could organize a competition that gave a bunch of high schools some plastic model kits of a particular tractor and some wind tunnel time and challenge them to get the measured drag of the tractor/trailer rig as low as possible. The winning entry gets built full-size and tested on the road.
todd says
I did say medium duty trucks. That’s a F450 flatbed or any number of other class 4, 5, or 6, 2-axle truck. Those are about the same price as a car, cheaper if it already needs a new engine.
I imagine there are more of those on the road than the over-the-highway big rigs that everyone seems to be referring to.
-todd
Light is Good says
All fuel efficiency improvements are welcome. While improving fuel efficiency in trucks and buses gives more economic return per vehicle, improving fuel efficiency in cars may give more overall savings and pollution reducton as cars outnumber trucks and buses by a huge margin. Out of the 240 million cars on the road in the US, how many are trucks and buses? Of course, this depends on your definition of a truck. If you mean a four-wheel pickup trucks, I would categorise these under cars, as many of them average closer to 30mpg than 8mpg. If you mean a big rig, (I believe it’s called a semi-trailer), then there are around 10 million on the road in the US, plus about 1 million buses. The buses I can forgive, as they replace around forty cars on the road. The trucks? – most of that cargo should be on trains, so us smaller road users can be safer. Anyway, my point is that 230 million cars saving 147 gallons each per year each equals 34 billion gallons of fuel, but 11 million trucks and buses saving 3750 gallons of fuel each per year saves 41 billion gallons. This means it is worthwhile to improves car fuel economy. Also, as pointed out, the technology exists today to build 100mpg cars. The fuel efficiency improvements in trucks are harder to achieve, either because of the scale of the vehicle, but also because of fundamental aerodynamics. I’m delighted to see a high school proving how achievable a 100mpg car is.
john says
Class 8 trucks are already at the cutting edge for economy. Fuel=money for those guys. They don’t mess around with anything that wastes fuel or they go out of business.
Private citizens who’s cars are not merely a means to earn a living will put up with lots of wasted fuel. So there’s lots more room for improvement in passenger cars.
I am shocked no one is poking fun at using a Harley engine for a project like this since there are so many Harley haters. The truth is Harley engines are actually very economical. Tons of torque produced for not very much fuel consumed. I’d say these kids did a WHOLE lot of research and found out the Harley motor is just about the best choice.
People who have been around Ag tractors, Class 8 trucks, and sea worthy boats all pretty well know what is a fuel efficient engine and what isn’t. A large displacement, low RPM motor, with minimal number of cylinders is the best formula. Google “lugger diesel” and you will learn. A Harley engine follows the same formula.
Erik says
The harley engine will need a lot of attention to cooling, since it was never intended to be used under the hood of a car. If I were doing this project, I would use something like a KLR650 or other large, watercooled, single.
I wouldn’t say that every class 8 truck is on the cutting edge for fuel economy. I see a lot of trucks running dual wide block tires, with non-aero hoods and bodies, with visibly out of balance trailer tires, and huge clouds of black smoke. Running super singles, with an aero cab and trailer, properly maintained wheels and tires, and proper engine maintenance to not belch black smoke, could take these trucks from 4-5 loaded mpg all the way up to 7-9. I don’t know why they don’t. My guess is ignorance on the part of the fleet owners.
Decline says
Yeah, the hd motor wouldn’t have been my first choice but from what I have gathered it was donated or procured cheaply…you use what you have, and get it to work.
todd says
I imagine it was because it didn’t have an integrated transmission – they could couple the generator to the crank and save space. A big V-twin is not the most efficient motor, there are many smaller inline motors that produce similar or greater amounts of torque. For example, a 1400cc Kawasaki I4 makes 100 ft-lb whereas a 88 cubic inch (1400cc) Harley twin makes around 70.
I think there are no complaints about the choice of motor because it’s in a car. For some people it may not be the best choice for a motorcycle (for most people it is) but in a car, we have no basis for complaint.
As for the choice, as suggested, it’s likely what they had or were given – or what fit and what was available.
-todd
Cowpieapex says
But what is the mpg/hp of the Kawasaki? I’ve been ruined by my Buell which delivers 100+ hp at 50 mpg. I also use the KLR650 Erik mentions which delivers under 50hp under 50 mpg. It seems only BMW can exceed the frugality of the primitive American twins.
As to those who have helpfully pointed out that combustion engines require cooling, I don’t expect that such a discovery would actually qualify you to take part in this particular High School project.
todd says
don’t confuse fuel efficiency in a motorcycle application with thermal efficiency. A 1400 GTR motor working as a constant RPM generator in a car does not have to contend with 160mph wind resistance. At its 6200 peak efficiency RPM it is an 88kW generator (118hp). The 1400cc Harley at around 4200 RPM is a 42kW (56hp) generator meaning it will need to run twice as long to charge the same battery. Even though the Kawi motor is using 50% more fuel per minute you have to run the H-D motor two minutes for every one minute on the Kawi meaning the H-D will burn 33% more fuel per mile (assuming equal volumetric efficiency).
This is all fairly rough math but it gives you an idea.
-todd
cWj says
Please be careful not to presume what these children would have been or would have done without Hauger’s presence.
I have been paying attention to the West Philly team for a couple years now. I always enjoy hearing about their latest tech exploit/victory against teams with more money.
Paul Crowe - "The Kneeslider" says
The students may have done all sorts of things or nothing at all, but the students themselves say how the class got them involved and interested. Even high potential students, in an urban high school environment, are a drop out risk since staying in school may not do them much good. If they are sufficiently motivated to look for and pursue other options they might be very successful, but many might drop out and lose any chance of getting ahead. In any case, a class like this is a positive option and can’t hurt.
Mean Monkey says
I saw the PBS Frontline show on 07/17 and found it inspiring. My own experiences from high school shop-class have been used virtually every day for the past 40-odd years. So, let’s not quibble about which technology should be used. Instead, honor the kids for sticking it through the process of the two builds and getting the cars to the competition. I was thrilled for them.
Mean Monkey says
PS: Someone needs to clone a million more Simon Haugers.
Air cooler says
I hope they have big fan to cool the rear cylinder on the Harley engine!
Tin Man says
In my 32 years of Truck driving I’ve seen the fuel mileage double. In the 70s the Jimmy diesels were sloppy blown 2 strokes getting about 4mpg under load, By 2005 when I retired our rigs were getting 8mpg with a load, This was using low reving high torque Cummins Turbo Diesels. With a weight of 60,000 Lbs at 60 MPH trucks are much more fuel effiecant than cars. We would do whatever it took to increase fuel mileage in our fleet, way before it became fashionable in Autos.
john says
BINGO!
there’s one person here who knows a little about fuel economy
cycledave says
Just what the world needs, a hybrid car with drag pipes. Sorry, had to say that.
I love it when engineers and students combine smaller engines from motorcycles to achieve a higher mpg equivalent. Personally, I would prefer higher miles per gallon or equivalent energy usage from one power source instead of two. The best thing about internal combustion engines is that they are omnivorous and can be designed to burn other fuels like natural gas or hydrogen. Also, the technologies employed from Tesla Motors for electric propulsion is a step in the right direction for power and range. After seeing the Peraves E-tracer in person gives me hope for the future.
todd says
The next step is to convert it to burn CNG. It’s abundant and, on a cost-equivalence, about four times better than “gas”.
-todd
B50 Jim says
It’s not about fuel economy or even engineering. It’s about showing young people a positive model to guide their lives. At a time when gangs and drugs tantalize young people with the promise of belonging to a group and easy money, programs like this offer an alternative to tribalism that demonstrates that under responsible adult leadership they can live a productive life and be leaders in their own groups. Certainly it’s not a panacea to the problems facing young people, but it shows one way to start turning things around.
B50 Jim says
And hang fuel economy — toss all that hybrid hardware, drop in three more Harley V-twins, take the power from the middle, and see what it will do!
OMMAG says
I think this would be a good subject for MORE research.
How many other teams were involved in this competition?
How many other competitions like this are going on?
Who is funding the competitions?
What kind of results are being achieved?
decline says
Its technically correct full name was “Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE” and was set up through the X Prize foundation.
The basics were: 100mpg, 200 grams CO2 emissions and the car had to be able to be manufactured for the mass market. Thats the basics anyway. There were some divisions in that..but I really don’t know the full regulations. I think one had to have 4 doors and seat 4-5 people. The emission testing included the emissions for any electric production that took place outside the car as well…so for all electric cars it went off the emissions for a power plant to charge it? Something like that….
111 teams entered but only like 40 something actually made it to the event. Some teams had sponsored two cars, like the school team above in the article did. I didn’t even realize any high school teams had entered it, and I’m 99.9% certain they were the only one…
oh the wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_X_Prize
sorry its late, i’m tired
OMMAG says
Decline …. no sweat and thanks.
I did get some of that from the articles in the link provided and the article posted here. Thanks for the wiki link too.
I was suggesting that there may be other similar competitions with other sponsors ….. who knows?
I was also thinking that this could possibly be a good start for an ongoing topic. Of course it all depends on the extent and quality of formation that is out there… and if anyone has the time to keep track and report.