Advanced Vehicles EcoCar Garage

The Advanced Vehicles EcoCar Garage provides capabilities for vehicle modeling, integration and testing for the advancement of hybrid and electric technology.

Researchers and student teams, including ERAU’s EcoEagles, use this facility to develop advanced vehicles and prepare for international competitions, such as the Department of Energy-sponsored EcoCAR series.

Our garage space, in Lehman 186, is equipped for the development and testing of the hardware that goes into a state-of-the-art, consumer-acceptable vehicle. The design laboratory, in Lehman 171-B, offers top-of-the-line computers, computer-aided design systems, finite element analysis (FEA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, and a dSPACE HIL "hardware in the loop" system, which allows for simulation, development, and rapid testing of vehicle architectures and components.

This space is card-access controlled, enabling student researchers to work in the space on their own schedule with faculty permission, and is used as part of the Mechanical Engineering senior design for the high-performance vehicles track.

Equipment

• Specialized high-voltage work area
• Lift
• Machining equipment to enable fabrication and alteration of advanced experimental vehicle platforms
• Chassis dynamometer to test advanced powertrain configurations