The University of Texas at Austin is one of the 13 university teams in North America set to participate in the EcoCAR EV Challenge, a prestigious collegiate competition to re-engineer state-of-the-art vehicles and prepare students for the future.

ecocar team

The UT Austin team brings together a diverse group of innovative and talented individuals to develop and optimize the 2023 Cadillac LYRIQ, the first all-electric Cadillac SUV.

EcoCAR EV Challenge teams, sponsors, and organizers joined together in the second week of October 2022 for the first year’s Fall Workshop at the University of California, Davis.  Year one Fall Workshop is designed to provide all teams with essential trainings, knowledge and information required to start this four competition. In this article we will be overviewing the details of this workshop.

On the first day filled with training sessions, students had the opportunity to meet with other teams from over 15 universities across North America. Participants were given an overview of the new 2023 Cadillac Lyriq followed by an introduction to the various departments.

Day two of the workshop began with an introduction to EVNoire, a national award-winning organization, whose work focuses on E-Mobility Best Practices and E-Mobility Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

Later on in the evening, over a dozen EcoCAR Sponsors at the Sponsor Social Networking and Recruitment event. Some of the organizations present include the Department of Energy, General Motors, dSPACE, MathWorks, AAM, Paccar, Magna, Bosch, NXP, ONE, Denso, and Argonne National Lab.

The third day of the workshop consisted of technical and non-technical training sessions followed by the opportunity to hear from representatives from Sacramento Clean Cities, the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District and Green Tech Education and Employment, who educated EcoCAR students about mobility inequities in underserved communities to better prepare teams for the Equity in Mobility: Community Challenge. Workshop attendees then attended an educational outreach event and networking session at the Del Paso Heights Mobility Hub for a tour and networking event.

Throughout the 3-day workshop, students received a wide variety of hands-on training in the areas of engineering, communications, and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) from competition sponsors. These training sessions proved essential for the UT Austin EcoCAR team to better prepare them to tackle their upcoming engineering challenges throughout this four-year series.

The UT team ensured that they were also communicating with other teams to build a strong networking bridge to share the knowledge and experiences as well as to develop a sense of unity among universities. This would help us all together to address our nation’s toughest energy and mobility challenges, while also fostering a clean energy workforce that reflects the diversity of North America and prepares students to work in the automotive and energy industries.

Additionally, the UT Austin team which included the six team leaders had thoughtful discussions about the entwined nature of the various team departments and how best to ensure efficiency throughout the work. Through team dinners and gatherings, the team also created a social bond which they believe is important to ensure the success of the team over the next four years of the competition.

“It was exhilarating to be surrounded by other students across North America who were all there to do the same thing. More than that, the ability to mingle with my teammates gave me the motivation to lead the team to victory in my respective area” UT Austin Communications Manager Sherwin Shan quipped.

By the end of the event, the team headed back to Austin, well-prepared and more equipped to participate in this event and venture into Year 1 of the series. Throughout fall, the team will work towards building its presence on the UT Campus while working on technical theories as to how the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq can be improved while serving the broader campus and advocating for young minds in underserved and underrepresented communities to develop an interest in engineering, DEI and Communications.

To learn more about the EcoCAR EV Challenge and the universities participation, head over to our website at https://sites.utexas.edu/ecocar/ and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin.