UI Students Racing Into Future Electric Car A High-Tech Solution To Solving Air Pollution Problems

There are telltale signs the University of Idaho’s car of the future was built by college students.

It is highlighter yellow with black racing stripes, the floor is covered with reject carpet and the windshield is an interlocking spider web of cracks.

But its design, an electric car with batteries charged by a small gasoline engine in the back, is a high-tech solution to solving air pollution problems.

“It’s feasibly possible that the air that comes out of the tailpipe will be cleaner than the air that goes in,” said Ross Schlotthauer, a 22-year-old mechanical engineering senior.

Students built the yellow racer from the ground up, designing everything from the fiberglass body to the battery pack that powers the car.

They borrowed equipment from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory to measure tailpipe emissions from their work in progress.

They put the car on a dynamometer, a machine that mimics driving conditions by putting the front two wheels on rollers. Then the system measures pollution coming out the back end.

Car manufacturers are developing similar vehicles in response to stringent air pollution standards in traffic-choked states like California. They aren’t mass producing them yet, but the students hope their expertise will give them an edge in designing cars of the future.

Electric cars can run for about 100 miles before their batteries lose power, which is fine for poking around town. But road trips aren’t much fun when you have to stop and plug something into a socket every two hours.

Hybrid vehicles have a gasoline engine that kicks in when the batteries run low and recharges them on the fly. Because the engines are smaller and only used on the highway, air pollution is significantly reduced.

The University of Idaho hybrid vehicle, the third generation of a project students have been working on for about 6 years, runs on 28 car batteries sandwiched behind the front seats.

Schlotthauer and two other students are looking at adapting a smaller engine, the kind found on lawnmowers or trail motorcycles, to recharge the batteries.

The students are using the INEEL equipment to get baseline information about the car’s emissions. Then they can go back in May and see whether their improvements have worked.

Chad Nelson, 22, has been working on the project for three months, but still hasn’t driven the car.

The rumor is it’s fast and takes corners like a stock car.

He said he’s already got a good idea of what he’ll listen to during his maiden voyage, a little Alice in Chains followed by a little country music.

“This car was built by students, you’ve got to have a CD player,” Nelson said.

“We’ll get to spin some birdies, strictly for school and for research purposes.”