Today I saw a Chevy Volt in the MathWorks parking garage.

MathWorks is hosting the EcoCAR Fall Workshop. An internal announcement states:

More than 100 students representing 16 EcoCAR teams will be on MathWorks Natick campus Thursday September 30 through Sunday October 3, 2010. In addition to the student teams, representatives from Argonne National Lab and sponsors (including GM, EPA, dSpace, and FreeScale) will be in attendance throughout the workshop.
The MathWorks mentors and presenters have put together a solid training program to broaden teams' knowledge of MATLAB & Simulink and numerous other products they will use as they head back into their Green Garage to build the winning vehicle.
Although the teams will work hard, there will be some time to play hard too - they will suit up and enjoy racing at F1 Boston on Thursday and head into Downtown Boston to explore the city on Friday night.

That is why the un-released Chevy Volt is here... GM is a sponsor, so they drove it out from Detroit to highlight some of their coolest hardware. Last year they parked the EcoCar test vehicle on the MathWorks front lawn. In addition to the Volt, GM produces a two-Mode hybrid built using Model-Based Design.

More about EcoCar

EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge is a collegiate level advanced vehicle technology competition in which MathWorks is a platinum sponsor. My colleague Paul Smith was interviewed by the Green Garage. Here are some links to the interview where he explained MathWorks role in EcoCAR and what set Ohio State apart from the other teams. Paul went on to explain how things have changed over the years of EcoCAR and gave some advice to the teams.

More about the Volt

The Volt is a very cool vehicle with basically three modes: energy storing, energy depleting, and energy sustaining. The energy storing mode is used when regeneratively braking, or charging. Energy depleting is the electric only mode, with a range of about 40 miles on a full charge. Energy sustaining engages the gas engine to maintain a charge and extend the range of the vehicle. I also got to sit inside while my colleague Judy took the driver's seat

Comments?

Are you participating in the EcoCAR Challenge? Did you come to the fall workshops, or wish you had? Leave a comment here and tell us what you learned.