Deakin Car Design Under Wraps for Ford Global Challenge

Deakin University's 'under wraps' design for the Ford Global Challenge to design a Model-T for the 21^st Century leaves for Detroit on 29 August carried by Deakin's Tim de Souza (Chief Design Engineer) and Stuart Hanafin (Portfolio Coordinator). Deakin's project os code-names T² ('T-Squared')

Bernard Rolfe, the project leader and a senior lecturer from Deakin University's School of Engineering and Information Technology, said that Deakin's proposal uses the latest research and technology to redefine the idea of the modern car. "The design has used progressive research from a cross-disciplinary team effort from across the University – T2 is a very green machine," Dr Rolfe said.

Fuelled by the on-going debate over petrol prices, Deakin University has opted for a car that runs on air and incorporates lightweight materials in which Deakin is an acknowledged world leader. Dr Rolfe said that there were many infrastructure related advantages of using compressed air. "Compressed air requires less change to current infrastructure than other alternate sources," he said. "For xample, use of hydrogen would require a large change to petrol stations and existing infrastructure to accommodate this new power source."

Other design details of the new car, such as styling, safety features, emissions, range, steering and even the number of wheels are a closely-guarded secret.

Deakin University is the only Australian university and one of only five worldwide invited to participate in the Challenge, part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the fabled Model T, the car that changed the 20th Century. The challenge set by Ford is to design an inexpensive, innovative and sustainable car. The new Model T design aims to be universally affordable and will retail for under US $7,000.