News Release| EcoCAR 2 competition; Cal State L.A.

May 28, 2013

Cal State L.A.’s EcoCAR 2 team powers up to 2nd place overall in engineering competition

San Diego, CA – Performing at an astounding rate against North American top university competitors, Cal State L.A.’s (CSULA) EcoCAR 2 team recently came home 2nd place overall in Year Two of the EcoCAR 2: Plugging In to the Future collegiate engineering competition.

The prestigious three-year engineering competition, sponsored by General Motors (GM) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), consists of 15 North American universities working to modify a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu into a functioning hybrid vehicle.

During Stage 1 of the Year Two competition, CSULA’s team succeeded in being the second team to get its engine running, its car fully functioning and testing on GM’s Desert Proving Grounds (DPG) in Yuma, Arizona. During the last days in Yuma, CSULA was one of only a couple of teams to complete all dynamic events on the DPG.

During Stage 2 of Year Two held in San Diego, CSULA completed its final team presentations in the following categories: mechanical, electrical, controls, communications, and business. The team impressed judges and snagged the “Most Improved Team Award” for Year Two and also received 2nd place overall in the EcoCAR 2 competition.

“As our first time competing in an advanced vehicle technology competitions (AVTC), we feel extremely honored to be named 2nd place overall in this competition,” says Kortnee Smith, communications manager for CSULA’s EcoCAR 2 team. “We worked a lot and went through sleepless nights to get to this point, and we want to continue to best represent our university and our home state. This achievement will only make us stronger as a team.”

CSULA team members include (pictured, second l-r): Abraham Vargas, Lupe Banales, Ren Fang, Professor David Blekhman, Justin Bower, Christopher Reid, Jovanny Gomez, Yessenia Toscano, Kortnee Smith, Abdul Shabana, Michael Choi, and Lester Dolmos. (Not pictured: adviser Ted Nye)

Pictured: CSULA EcoCAR2 team.

The CSULA team will now spend Year Three of EcoCAR 2 perfecting its design before the competition finals in Washington, D.C., in May 2014.

For CSULA’s EcoCar 2 updates: https://www.facebook.com/CalStateLAEcoCAR2.

#  #  #

Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 220,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six Colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to the Honors College for high-achieving students. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu