MERIDIAN, Miss. (Queen City Newsfeed) – The Meridian Community College Workforce Development Center hosted a panel on the EcoCar Mobility Challenge Monday at 2 p.m.
The event was a partnership with MCC, the MSU Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, and the Mississippi Automotive Manufacturers Association.
This is a 4 year challenge with 13 different teams from across North America.
For this round, students are working on a 2023 Cadillac Lyriq (not pictured in video) to try and make it more energy efficient and autonomous.
Project Manager Clair Meeks said right now, her team is in year 3 of development.
“Our vehicle is almost ready to run. We’re not running quite yet, but we’re almost there. Once that happens, we’re going to be going into a testing cycle where we’re going to be testing a lot of our controls and calibrations and get it back to be that luxury experience that you expect when you buy a Cadillac. So, that’s kind of our goal for year 3 and then into year 4 as we’re really going to be refining and elevating the driving experience,” said Meeks.
The goal of Monday’s visit to MCC was to peak the interest of possible transfer students.
“It is industry level experience. It’s something unlike anything else you can get while you’re in class. Internships are great, co-ops are great, buy you get to do this year round. Not only is it an intern level, some industry partners consider this to be prior experience, job experience, which is an incredible opportunity for students. So, should an MCC student transfer to MSU, it would be incredibly beneficial for them to join the EcoCar team— not only for that experience, but also our students have an average of a $6,000 higher starting salary than those students in the college of engineering that don’t participate in EcoCar, so there’s an early incentive right there,” said Meeks.
So far, MSU’s team hasn’t won the overall award that’s presented at the end of year four, but throughout their time competing they’ve won first place in 4 individual years for things like integration, testing, and presentation.
