UOIT EcoCAR

Welcome to the University of Ontario Institute of Technology's (UOIT) EcoCAR website. UOIT is one of 16 North American schools participating in EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge. The three year competition, initiated by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by Argonne National Laboratory, challenges students to reduce the environmental impact by redesigning a GM-donated vehicle to be more energy efficient.

Participating teams are asked to minimize vehicle emissions and fuel consumption while maintaining the vehicle's performance, safety and consumer appeal. Students use real-world engineering processes to design and integrate their solutions into the vehicle. UOIT is the only school in the competition that has implemented a full function electric vehicle architecture. What makes the UOIT team uniquely qualified to do this? UOIT owns Canada's largest electric vehicle fleet, which includes electric buses, electric pick-up trucks, electric bicycles, even a hydrogren hybrid electric wheel chair!

The primary objective of EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge is to provide engineering students with hands-on experience within the automotive industry. The competition exposes students to real-world software applications and vehicle design processes, in effect training them for their careers in engineering. Additionally, each team is provided with a mentor from General Motors, allowing students to develop connections within the industry. The competition encourages students to design environmentally-friendly advanced propulsion technologies that reflect the direction of consumer demand and the sense of social responsibility within the automotive industry.

The EcoCAR competition has helped showcase UOIT's capacity to train the next generation of engineers for the automotive industry. In fact, UOIT offers Canada's only Bachelor level automotive engineering program. The UOIT EcoCAR team is comprised of students from a variety of programs, and is advised by Dr. Greg Rograuer, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.