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McGill's Electric Snowmobile Wins during the Clean Snowmobile Challenge

Published: 19 March 2014

McGill University of Montreal, Canada won the Zero Emissions, or electric, category of the challenge last weekend at Michigan Technological University's Keweenaw Research Center.

Published on March 13, 2014 | SF Gate
by Dan Roblee

HOUGHTON, Mich. (AP) — Located in Flint, only an hour or so away from the epicenter of Michigan's auto industry, Kettering University participates in all of the Society of Automotive Engineers design competitions.

But, "Out of all of SAE's events, we love the winter the best," said Kettering Clean Snowmobile Challenge team member Jeremy Peshkin, whose team won first place in the Internal Combustion category of the 2014 challenge.

McGill University of Montreal, Canada won the Zero Emissions, or electric, category of the challenge, which wrapped up competition with acceleration, load test and handling events last weekend at Michigan Technological University's Keweenaw Research Center.

[...]

McGill, which repeated as Zero Emissions champion, was the only electric team to complete all events this year. They used new battery packs, but stuck with the same control systems and most of the other components that worked for them last year.

A clear understanding of safety practices gave them a leg up, according to team member Cyrille Goldstein.

"Most of the difference is keeping a really clear control of high voltage," Goldstein said. "There needs to be a good startup and shutoff sequence for getting the voltage out of the battery pack. A lot of it is, if something fails, does it fail safe?"

Read the rest of the story here.

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