FAIRBANKS — At first glance, the UAF Nanook EV looks like just about any
other snowmachine you might see tooling around on the trails in Alaska, but take
a look under the hood — and seat — and you will find a very different
machine.
Of course, the two “Danger. High Voltage” stickers on the outside of the
machine might give it away, too.
“We were required to put those on there,” Michael Golub said with a
grin.
The Nanook EV — short for electric vehicle — is an electric snowmachine built by Golub and four other University of Alaska Fairbanks engineering students who recently took second place in the zero emissions category in the Society of Automotive Engineering’s annual Clean Snowmobile Challenge at Michigan Tech University in Hougton, Mich.
While the competition focuses on gas-powered machines, the zero emissions
category joined the 10-year-old competition in 2005, in large part because the
National Science Foundation wanted to find a zero emission vehicle for
transporting scientists on the Greenland Ice Cap to and from zero-emission
research sites where they are studying sensitive atmospheric chemicals, Peterson
said.
“(The National Science Foundation) put up the money to push for this,” he
said. “They have an immediate need for a battery powered
snowmachine.”
Part of the prize for winning the zero emission category is that the NSF
takes the winning machine to use in
The Nanook EV has a top speed of 32 mph. At that speed, the batteries will
last about 30 minutes, Golub said. The slower you go, the longer the charge will
last.
“If you take the speed down to 20 mph you can go an hour plus,” he
said.
The machine weighs 721 pounds, about 150 pounds heavier than the stock
internal combustion sled. The batteries, all 210 pounds of them, are to blame
for that. It takes about six to eight hours to charge the batteries with a
12-volt charger.
In the range event, the Nanook EV went 16.5 miles, four miles farther than any other team, and was still going when judges called it. Lisa Stowell, a 23-year-old senior and the smallest member of the team, was the driver in the range event.
The project was an educational one that allowed the students to use what they
have been learning in the classroom for the last four or five
years.