by Kevin A. Wilson
 he October morning that I went to drive the Dodge ESX concept car,
it was so wet and cold at the test track outside the Chrysler Tech Center
that I had no choice: I had to go sit in the Northwind.The Northwind blew in from Michigan Technological University, and my experience there 23 years ago told me that student engineers working in Houghton, Mich., near Lake Superior, would have put a priority on making the heater work. They had and it did. The Northwind's was the warmest air within two miles. The car is the MTU student engineers' Dodge Intrepid, converted to a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) under the Department of Energy's FutureCar Challenge. FutureCar is an adjunct to a program that partners the Big Three with the federal government to solve fuel economy and emissions worries. The targets: 80 mps, a sub-12 second 0-60 mph time in a midsize car with a 380-mile range, and half the emissions. Barring a battery breakthrough that would make pure electrics viable, hybrids are the way to go. A dozen colleges competed in FutureCar; each Big Three automaker provided four cars and $10,000 worth of seed money. Chrysler had its four Intrepid teams on hand (plus two Neons from an earlier competition) and showed off its ESX diesel-electric car. Since Chrysler unveiled the ESX in January, it has slashed its 0-60 mph time from a snail-like 30 seconds (AW, April 22) to a brisker 15-second saunter. The students hope to see dramatic improvements, too. The Intrepid-based entries hail from the University of Wisconsin, Canada's Concordia University and the University of Maryland. And there's the Northwind, which now does 0-60 in 16 seconds. Full disclosure: I attended Michigan Tech long enough to flunk out in 1973-74 and still have an unfathomable affection for the place, including the long, dark winters with snow stacked three stories high. UW and Concordia built parallel design hybrids, which switch between the electric motor(s) and an |
internal combustion engine. But MTU built a series hybrid,
with a Geo Metro 1.0-liter gas engine in the tank. The gas engine powers
accessories and drives the large 24 kW AC induction alternator from Fisher
Electronics to keep a charge on the 26 lead-acid storage batteries that
power the car. At full charge, they're packing 333 volts to drive the brushless
DC motor, a 53 kW model from Unique Mobility Driving the Northwind is akin to driving a slow Intrepid, only it's louder and warmer inside. Its weight distribution is in line with the original car's, so handling is fine. The odd part is that when you stand on the go-pedal, the car accelerates but the engine slows down a bit as that monster alternator puts a load on it. Lift off for a corner and the tach needle bounces upward several hundred rpm even as the regenerative braking erases velocity.  Compared with the Intrepid, the Northwind
has two powerplants instead of one, weights 725 pounds more, takes 3.0 seconds
longer to run a quarter-mile, and has about 23 percent of the cargo capacity.
But it gets 43 mpg instead of the stock Intrepid's EPS-rated 28, runs cleanly,
and might go 50 miles on battery power after you run out of gas. It only
costs about $100,000. Clearly, there's room for improvement.MTU placed seventh after the throttle actuator got too hot at a crucial phase of the competition. The team plans to supplant the Metro engine with a two-stroke from Mercury Marine, shrink the battery pack and refine the development for Phase Two FutureCar competition at GM's Proving Grounds in Milford, Mich., next June. It should be a tropical retreat from Houghton, where snow piles tend to linger on the street corners well into June. |
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