West Philadelphia High students' 100 m.p.g. competition

Simon Hauger has an engineering degree from Drexel University and 12 years of experience building cars, yet he was having trouble making a special box to hold the battery for a new hybrid vehicle.

Luckily, Daniel Moore was there to lend a hand. Just 17, Moore figured out how to make the box with a machine that bends metal.

"He just saw it differently than I did," Hauger recalled.

This was hands-on education, West Philadelphia High School style.

Moore is one of two dozen students on the West Philly Hybrid X Team, an after-school program with bold dreams. The team is headed to Michigan this weekend for the latest round in a $10 million international competition with a provocative quest:

Build a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon.

The contest is called the Progressive Automotive X Prize, and just 22 entrants remain from the 111 who started out last year - a roster that includes companies, universities, inventors with corporate sponsorships. And one public high school.

"It raised our eyebrows a bit," said competition director Eric Cahill.

The students are not doing it all by themselves. They have expert guidance from a crew of faculty members and paid helpers, and a budget of close to $500,000 from grants and contributions. Yet Hauger, the team's director, said the kids were integral to the success of the group, which is entering not one but two cars in the event.

There was the time that the adult technicians couldn't tell how to install the seat belts on one of the two vehicles, both of which are hybrids. Junior Sowande Gay figured it out by reading the manual. On another occasion, a student came up with a creative way to remount the vehicle's suspension after the team had cut through the car's frame to insert an electric motor.

"It happens all the time when we're stumped," Hauger said. "We look at things a certain way, and the kids see them differently."

Hauger began the program in 1998 as a way to improve on traditional textbook-style learning, a method he calls "pretty boring." He hoped it would encourage students to stay in school.

Mission accomplished, said senior Justin Carter, who credits the program with boosting his interest in school along with his grades.

"I felt like I was being engaged instead of bossed around," Carter said. He said he had a job lined up at Piazza Honda of Philadelphia as a technician, and he plans to attend Community College of Philadelphia in the fall.

Of the team's five seniors, three others are headed to Pennsylvania State University in the fall. One of them, Jacques Wells, plans to study mechanical engineering at the Berks County campus.

They are gaining admirers among their fellow entrants.

"I love their enthusiasm," said Rick Woodbury, founder of Commuter Cars Corp. of Spokane, Wash., which is entering a car called the Tango. "It's pretty amazing."

One of the West Philly team's cars consists of a Ford Focus chassis with a motley array of off-the-shelf parts on the inside. For the other one, the team started with the frame of a GTM - a two-seated kit car made by Factory Five in Wareham, Mass.

After the "knockout" stage of the competition that starts this weekend, there are two more rounds before the winners are announced. The prizes include $5 million for the winner of the "mainstream" class - meaning the car has at least four seats and a range of 200-plus miles - and $2.5 million to the winners in two "alternative" classes for two-seaters.

The cars have to get 100 miles per gallon, or the equivalent if they use electric motors. In this stage, entrants have to show only that they are two-thirds of the way to the 100-miles-per-gallon goal.

The West Philly team members feel sure they'll get there.

In their modified GTM, a big factor is the 1.9-liter Volkswagen engine that they chose to use. As is, it can achieve 50 miles to the gallon in highway driving, Hauger said. They then hired a consultant in Canada to boost that figure to 65 by reprogramming the engine's computerized control unit, tweaking the air-fuel mixture for various driving scenarios, Hauger said.

"We're packing in more air into the cylinder, so the fuels can burn more completely," he said.

One reason vehicle manufacturers don't do this is that it may reduce engine life expectancy, Hauger said.

Further mileage gains came in the form of high-quality fuel injectors that do a better job of atomizing the fuel. The sleek car is both aerodynamic and lightweight, at 2,500 pounds.

Finally, it is a plug-in hybrid, which Hauger said was more efficient than the typical kind that recharges its battery through regenerative braking - reclaiming energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat from the brakes.

The customized Ford Focus also uses a fuel-efficient engine: a two-cylinder, 80-horsepower model made by Harley Davidson. The engine can burn both gasoline and biobutanol, a fuel that, like ethanol, can be made from fermenting plant sugars but packs more energy per gallon.

Like the GTM, the Ford has a 60-horsepower electric motor. Both cars feature lithium-ion battery packs, made by International Battery of Allentown.

As in commercial garages, the West Philly team is heavy on testosterone. But there are several girls, including 10th grader Alexis Bland, who was expertly wielding a power drill one day this week.

"I can kind of get into some spots that other teammates can't," the petite team member explained.

She and senior Sekou Kamara were working on the GTM, attaching "sill plates" - aluminum strips that run underneath the doors. Some students focus on body work while others do outreach and the website: www.evxteam.org.

The $500,000 project budget includes cash and material donations, said volunteer team manager Ann Cohen. The support comes from business and labor, and from groups as well as individuals - including one in Sweden. The contributions have ranged from a few dollars to thousands.

The biggest, announced last year, was a $267,100 Alternative Fuels Incentive Grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The team received an official sendoff Wednesday from Mayor Nutter, who got a short ride in the modified GTM on Dilworth Plaza. The glossy black, low-slung machine glided quietly to a stop at the northwest corner of City Hall.

"That was really exciting," Nutter said upon emerging from the passenger side. "A little different than what I drive in every day."

If they win, the team members plan to use the funds to establish a standalone automotive-themed school, and provide seed money for a business that would make eco-friendly cars. Money could also be used for scholarships.

One thing the students don't get to do is drive the cars, for insurance reasons and for "9 million and 47 other reasons," said Cohen, the team manager.

Still, Daniel Moore thinks he ought to get a shot.

"As many racing-car games as I've played," the teenager said, "I keep telling them I know how to drive."