Human-Powered Vehicles Compete At Moffett Field

Apr. 13 - KGO (KGO) -- Engineering students from all across the country are coming to the Bay Area for a unique design competition. The idea is to create a car that is sleek, light, fun to drive, and here's the unique part -- with a human engine.

These human-powered vehicles, or HPVs, have all been designed and built by undergraduate engineering students. Twenty-five teams from across the country have come to Moffett Field for a design competition. It's sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Kaland Guiley: "It's really about the students going through a complete design cycle, a complete product life cycle -- designing a vehicle, building it, and actually coming here to the competition."

The teams have to prove their vehicles in sprint, endurance and utility categories.

Although they look like flattened-out bicycles, they are faster, getting up to around 50 miles per hour, and they can carry a larger payload than bikes.

Levi Patton: "If you put your hand out of a car window, flat, it's pretty hard to hold it there. If you put it sideways, you have less frontal area, makes it easier to go through the air. For laid back, like this, less wind is pushing on us so we can go faster."

The team from Clarkson University in Pottsdam, New York learned from last year's mistakes.

Nick Tanner: "Make it light and efficient. That's pretty much it. If you saw last year's car, it's pretty ugly and real heavy compared to this one, so we made a lot of progress as far as just cutting weight and it's a lot more fun to drive than the other one was."

The Portland, Oregon team is particularly proud of its frame.

Competitor: "It has an adjustable wheel track which allows us to lower the center of gravity and gives us more stability in the endurance race. When we put a rear wheel in the back and go into endurance mode, we gain about three miles an hour in the turns."

Organizers say the idea is not really to see these designs end up in use in the real world, although they wouldn't mind.

But the designers have other plans. Nick Tanner from Clarkson will be working with nuclear submarines and Levi Patton from Oregon wants to design shoes and backpacks.

The competition runs through the weekend.

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