A team of students at the Thayer School of Engineering hosted Formula Hybrid, the first collegiate car race to use only hybrid and electric vehicles, at the New Hampshire International Speedway on Thursday. The event was accompanied by a conference held Wednesday on the development of hybrid cars.
According to Dana Haffner '06, a Thayer student who helped organize the event, the first Formula Hybrid was intended not as a formal competition but as an activity where students could show their work to the public.
"The goal is to raise interest, get people excited about alternative fuels," Haffner said. "Hybrid technology is an exploding industry."
The only school that participated in the event besides Dartmouth was McGill University, which brought a student-designed electric car. Students from Wentworth College also attended, though they did not participate in the race.
Others in attendance included students, faculty, friends of the competitors and the press. There were about 50 spectators in total.
"The Dartmouth car performed very well," Haffner said. "We're glad that it works."
Sally Smith '05, another Thayer student involved with the project, said that Dartmouth's hybrid car had been constructed in less than a year and was finished within a week of the event itself. She explained that the Thayer team constructed the hybrid from one of Dartmouth's older race cars that had previously been used in a Formula SAE race, a national competition held annually in Detroit in which Thayer students have historically competed.
"The end product looks like a Frankenstein vehicle," Smith said. "It's got a gasoline engine, a big electric motor and a little throttle."
Smith said that the hybrid race car had started as a culminating experience for several engineering students and grew into a larger event.
"At the end of the day, I get to go home and tell my friends I built a race car for credit," she said.
Research Engineer Douglas Fraser, Formula Hybrid's faculty advisor, said that students had originally intended to enter a hybrid race car in the Formula SAE race until SAE passed a rule disallowing the entry of hybrids.
"We decided that if we couldn't include a hybrid in Formula SAE, we'd start our own event," he said.
Fraser added that after students at Thayer had begun to advance the Formula Hybrid project, the SAE program agreed to sponsor the event.
"What was really exciting was that SAE looked at it and said, 'Great, we'll help sponsor it.' They'll have some of their top people at the conference," he said before the event took place.
Fraser expressed interest in next year's Formula Hybrid competition, saying that roughly 15 schools had already expressed interest in the event.
"Given the energy crisis we're looking at, and given the somewhat 'pokey' reputation that hybrid cars have, having a lot of engineering students looking at how to make a hybrid car perform better while still improving the efficiency is a very interesting task. We've gotten some very creative solutions," he said, adding that he hopes students involved in Formula Hybrid "will come up with something to revolutionize the industry."
Haffner also emphasized the long-term purpose behind Formula Hybrid.
"You don't really have that sports-car image associated with a hybrid," she said. "The overall big- picture, societal goal is to prove that hybrids can be not only fuel efficient but high performance as well."
