GM Launches University Self-Driving Chevy Bolt EV Competition

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GM has now selected the 8 schools that will be participating in its previously announced self-driving Chevy Bolt EV competition/project.

The 8 schools are: Michigan Tech, Virginia Tech, the University of Toronto, Texas A&M, the University of Waterloo, Kettering University, the University of Michigan, and North Carolina A&T.

Teams from these 8 schools will have a total of 3 years to design and build their self-driving Chevy Bolt EVs. The results will eventually be tested on an urban testing course.

Engadget provides more: “GM is counting on these young ones to nail all the really hard stuff. The first major milestone comes in the Spring of 2018 — by then, the schools involved should be able to get their Bolts down a straight road without any obstacles.

“Tapping into this kind of institutional power is a smart move on GM’s part — savvy young researchers and engineers could dream up solutions that stodgy corporate brain trusts might miss. Including Kettering, Michigan Tech, and the University of Michigan was a no-brainer — thanks to their proximity, these schools have enjoyed long-standing relationships with the auto industry. Every other university on the list, though, has tested their own self-driving technologies as well. A related blog post from the University of Toronto sheds a little light on how big these efforts will be: UT’s team will lean on something like 100 students, with roles ranging from sensor calibration to algorithm design.”

That does make the effort sound like a serious one, but that doesn’t mean that anything useful will necessarily come out of it. It’ll be interesting, though, if anything does.


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James Ayre

James Ayre's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy.

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