Advanced Transportation Technology Being Developed At UTC

Hydrogen powered vehicles appear decades away from becoming commonplace.  Before we reach that point, several transportation technologies will be developed to get us there.

The vehicles of tomorrow may be built today by UT Chattanooga's engineering department.  Hoping to position Chattanooga as a hub for transportation technology development, Congressman Zach Wamp recently moved a million dollars in federal research funds to UTC.

Mark Hairr, Program Director for Advanced Transportation Technology Institute at UTC, says "our purpose is to do on the street research, we're not hidden back in a laboratory to generate a report, we actually will have vehicles on the street with advanced technologies and intelligent transportation systems."

UTC will gear most of its research toward intelligent transportation system, like vehicle location and voice response tools.  The other focyus, energy consumption, such as building a better battery for hybrid vehicles.

Students already get hands-on experience constructing cars with specialized constraints, like mini-baja's and moon buggies.  Nettie Halcomb, an engineering student, says for the moon buggy, "we wanted it to be light, we wanted it to be durable, and I guess as fast as it could be considering the conditions."

Student will be tasked with helping turn ideas into prototypes, to be evaluated at the old TVA test track before being placed into a less controlled environment.  Hairr says "transit, campus shuttle systems are a good place to do the research."

Hairr adds vehicles can be developed in a relatively short time frame at an affordable cost, predicting the first prototype could be on campus before the end of the year.

UTC's move to develop advanced transportation technologies comes through a collaboration with the Advanced Transportation Technology Institute.  ATTI helped promote the use of electric buses, like the ones Carta uses downtown.