Mississippi State Built the Car of the Future
Looking for the Car of the Future? Set your GPS to arrive at Mississippi State University’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS).
CAVS is a state-of-the-art research center where teams of undergrad and graduate students from MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering get hands-on experience researching and developing solutions to engineering challenges in the auto industry. Out of those teams rose the hybrid-electric Car of the Future, which made its debut at the 2016 Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit.
With the auto industry pushing goals like 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 (that’s a 50% increase from where we were just last year), carmakers rely on engineering feats like those coming from the minds of current and former Bagley students.
The Car of the Future was the brainchild of the college’s namesake, James Worth Bagley, a 1961 and 1964 MSU electrical engineering alumnus. Bagley pitched his vision, then put his money behind it in the form of a generous gift to the MSU Foundation. Then off went the teams — a mix of students, faculty, and alumni who researched, built, tested, and enhanced Bagley’s vision until the Car of the Future was born.
Michelle Price, who earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering in 2016 and is pursuing her master’s in the same area, is one of the many people who played an important role in the car’s construction. Once the subframe she’d created via a computer-aided design software program had been ordered, she said, “I remember thinking, ‘This could go really right or really wrong.’” But in the end, she said, “We got it made, and it pretty much fit like a dream. That was huge.”
Today, MSU says, the Kandy Burgundy and Ice White Pearl custom paint scheme coats one of the world’s lightest, greenest hybrid vehicles “that offers over 100 miles of driving using the equivalent of a single gallon of gas — an achievement no other car on the market can offer at the same level of superior efficiency, sporty handling, and outstanding performance.” The car, originally a 2013 Subaru BRZ, also boasts several 3D-printed parts and a regenerative braking system, meaning energy normally lost in the braking process is captured and used again to accelerate the vehicle. These and many other features contribute to greater efficiencies for lower environmental impact and show MSU’s range of capabilities in the development of advanced technology.
In the SEC, It Just Means More.
To Mississippi State, It Just Means More Heads Turning in Factories and on Roads.
