Pit crews scrambled off the track. Drivers flipped their switches.
“Let’s go,” yelled starter Kerry Ibsen as he dropped the green flag.
The electric cars rolled forward as Portland General Electric’s sixth annual Electron Run began at Lane Community College Saturday.
After three heats, the team from Willamette High School emerged the victor. This is the second consecutive year that Willamette High has placed first in the Eugene run, which included 18 teams from as far away as Battleground, Wash.
“It looks like a race, but it’s a learning environment,” said Richard Turnock, PGE’s educational specialist.
PGE has sponsored the races for eight years to give students a place to show off their engineering skills and test their cars. Saturday’s event was the third race of five for the 2001 season and was held during Earth Day weekend.
The program lets students design and build electric cars to explore industry and engineering careers. The program also fulfills part of the state’s requirements for the Certificate of Advanced Mastery.
Teams include a driver, designers, pit crew members and lap counters. Add in the supporters who showed up to cheer on racers Saturday, and more than 200 people attended the event in the upper parking lot of Lane Community College. All competing teams receive seed money from PGE to start their projects.
“They each get $200 on account to spend — just enough to race and be competitive — but not enough to be really fancy,” said Mike Hodgert, a physics and engineering teacher from Willamette High School.
Hodgert has led instruction of the program for 10 years. He said his dedication, including attending an all-day event on a Saturday, is inspired by the kids.
“You have 40 kids from our program out here on a Saturday — not only a Saturday, but a nice, sunny Saturday — to do this, instead of off doing other things, getting into trouble or tagging; you know it’s worth it,” said Hodgert.
Each team started with 64 pounds of lead-acid batteries and were required to weigh their batteries before and after the heats to ensure a fair competition. To claim victory, teams discover the race is more about endurance than speed.
“Whoever goes the farthest in an hour wins,” said Turnock. “Because of the limited amount of energy, it is their design that matters more in the end.”
Chris Howard and Pat Johnson, members of the winning team for Willamette High, know all about design. Black electrical tape secured a watch to the dashboard on the purple and silver fiberglass shell for Car #128. Amid the grinding sound of compressors the two circled their car to show off its key elements. This is the second winning car their team has built together; their entry also won first place last year.
“Steering is the key to this car,” said Johnson.
He pointed out the car’s triangular frame and 4-foot-wide wheel base as other key factors in their winning design.
Weight, distance, wind resistance and driving skill all contribute to how far a team’s car makes it around the track.
The competition mirrors recent development trends in the real world. Companies such as Honda are also designing electrical cars for the future. Leading the trend is the Honda Insight, the first gasoline-electric hybrid to exceed the 70-mpg mark in highway tests, the company claims.