A group of University of Alberta students are hoping their small, sleek, grey and yellow vehicle will take the top spot when it comes to being green.

The engineering students are preparing to go up against more than 100 teams from across North and South America in a bid to see whose vehicle is the most energy-efficient.

The U of A EcoCar team’s single seat vehicle runs on a hydrogen fuel cell and emits no greenhouse gases.

“As our car is driving around, the only emission is going to be water," said Matthew Sponiar, a fifth-year mechanical engineering student and project manager for the EcoCar team.

“It takes hydrogen and then oxygen from the air so the hydrogen is from a compressed tank that you store on board the vehicle, the oxygen is in the air, it will combine those two through a chemical process to make electricity, the electricity is then fed to the rear wheels to power the motors and what’s really exciting about that is it’s a zero-emission technology."

The body of the car is also eco-friendly, made from bio-composite fibres.

“What a bio-composite fibre is, is it’s an alternative to fibre glass and it is plant based so we're really pushing the sustainability of the material,” Sponiar said.

It was designed, built and will race this April in the Shell Eco-Marathon, a competition that challenges post-secondary and high school student teams take their energy-efficient vehicles the furthest using the least amount of energy.
 

More than 150 teams competing

The competition runs in Houston, Texas from April 5-7 and will include more than 150 entries from across North and South America.

There are seven Canadian teams including the U of A competing. Each car will have to complete at a 10-kilometre course. Once completed, the fuel efficiency for each vehicle is measured.

There are different fuel classes teams can take part in, including diesel, gas and pure-battery electrics. The U of A team is competing in the hydrogen category.

It’s the team’s goal to take the top spot this year, after coming in second last year.

They say they’ve taken lessons learned from last year’s event and have applied it to this year’s second-generation vehicle.

“We've been able to take all of the mistakes first time around and there's a quite a few being a student project, you're really learning on the go and take a step back and really apply them to this car,” Sponiar said.

The event is also meant to spark debate and inspire young engineers to think about fuel efficiency, as well as proving cars of the future are possible today.

“It’s important on two aspects; the first is to really engage students at the school level in practical work. A lot of your courses are going to be very focused on the technical side and you’re going to be looking at the theory behind how the world works and you don’t really get to apply much of what you’re learning in a hands-on environment,” Sponiar said.

“I think it acts like a really good showcase product. To show, look what some students have been able to develop look at the zero-emission technology they’re working with and increase the awareness in society about sustainability and bring that hopefully forward so when these vehicles do start showing up on the market they might have seen that before and might be more interested.”

The team will be blogging about their experience in Houston.

Click here for more information about the EcoCar team and to read their blog.

Click here to find out more about the Shell Eco-Marathon.

With files from Graham Neil