Roger Billings and a hydrogen VW Beetle | Provided
Roger Billings and a hydrogen VW Beetle | Provided
Acellus Academy Founder Roger Billings reminisced about the Urban Vehicle Design Competition (UVDC) in August 1972 in Ann Arbor at General Motors during a recent episode of his show “Science L!VE with Roger Billings.”
Billings discussed why the hydrogen car beat the electric cars during the competition, despite the electric cars receiving perfect scores of zero.
The competition was an 18-month program where 66 vehicles from 62 universities between the United States and Canada competed to create low-emission vehicles.
Billings said the instruments used at General Motors were so sensitive they could pick up any pollutants from the cars.
“Some of the cars ran on methanol, one car ran on ammonia – boy, that stunk – and there were a bunch of cars that ran on electric batteries,” Billings said. “That’s really interesting. The way they scored the race is … it was like golf, the lower score you get the better.”
Billings said when they measured the pollution of the electric cars, theirs was zero.
“It was zero, zero, zero … all the electric cars had a perfect score of zero” Billings said. “That kind of shook me up a little bit. Because they generated a lot of pollution when they made the electricity and they didn’t count that.”
Billings said there was also a fly-wheel car that was started by a large tractor-trailer. However, by the time the car drove into the laboratory for the competition, it also received a zero pollution score.
Billings said when it was his car's turn, he noticed officials stopped in the middle of the test and then started again.
"And then they came out with the results and they said they had to recalibrate because the pollution was so low," Billings said. "And that made me kind of happy."
Billings said officials told him that the carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons were less than the air in the room and the nitrous oxide was extremely low as well. He added that his car ran hydrocarbons in the air then through the engine and it burned them all up.
"No wonder it went down," he said.
Billings said although all the electric cars were zero, his car was negative, meaning the hydrogen car won first place in the clean-air contest.
Billings said he was glad he persisted and learned integrity.
"Science L!VE" is broadcast live on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. Central time and is part of the Roger Billings Scholarship Program at Acellus Academy.
Alerts Sign-up