FEV, Inc. Announces Winners of FEV Powertrain Development Award

AUBURN HILLS, Mich., May 21 -- Advanced powertrain and vehicle systems engineering company FEV, Inc. announced the recipients of the FEV Powertrain Development Award, presented to three collegiate teams that designed, developed and demonstrated exemplary powertrain solutions in the 2009 Formula SAE competition held May 13, 2009 - 16 at Michigan International Speedway near Brooklyn, MI.

The Award was presented on Saturday, May 16 during the awards ceremony that was held at the conclusion of the competition. The Powertrain Development Award considers critical powertrain relevant aspects, including performance, fuel economy, durability and cost in determining a winner. The award uses a quantitative scoring system that is intended to be a metric for the optimization process that the student teams go through as they develop their solutions, much like the work that a professional engineer might perform on a day-to-day basis in the industry.

The winning teams were:

1st place: Ecole de Technologie Superieure (Quebec, Canada), (718.1 points), $1,500 prize

2nd place: Graz University of Technology (Graz, Austria), (685.2 points), $750 prize

3rd place: Universite Laval (Quebec, Canada), (681.5 points), $300 prize

"FEV is very pleased to be an award sponsor of the Formula SAE event for the third consecutive year," said Robert J. Last, vice president of operations and communications for FEV. "This program, and the preparation that goes into developing these vehicles, promotes the development of critical and practical knowledge that these students will need to excel in their careers. We support the Formula SAE program because it fosters the creativity and innovation skills that these students must ultimately bring to industry.

Student teams must adhere to the rules specified by the SAE, which can be found on its Web site, www.sae.org. In the process of developing engineering solutions that are represented in their vehicles, students will have also mastered critical elements of strategy planning, project management, contingency planning, and logistics management, according to Last.

"What SAE has built into the FSAE event is a microcosm of the complete engineering and business project cycle, including fundraising and defending the project in a detailed presentation that is, in essence, an engineering study specifying how the vehicle solution was developed, along with all the calculations that support the results. These are essential skills that engineering students need to demonstrate to be successful in the industry," said Last.

The FEV Powertrain Development Award emphasizes the elements that are most important in the development of a powertrain and provides the engineering student and FSAE team with an "equation" that can be optimized, much like the product attribute decisions that today's powertrain designers and developers must make as they conduct their projects. This results in multiple solutions that a team can employ to win.

The winning team, Ecole de Technologie Superieure, did very well in three categories; cost, endurance and fuel economy, cementing its victory. Competition for second and third place was fierce, with less than 4 points separating the two. Notably, three U.S. universities, University of Michigan - Dearborn, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, placed 4, 5, and 6, respectively, and were in the running from start to finish, with final scores within 5 points of each other.

The winning entry used a Yamaha WR450 engine, with a vehicle weight of 325 lbs. The vehicle used 100 octane gasoline fuel. Graz University of Technology, the second place finisher, featured a Yamaha R6, 4-cylinder engine and ran on 98 octane gasoline fuel. The third place finisher, Universite Laval, was powered by a Honda CBR 600 F4i engine which ran of E85 fuel.