The “Let’s Do It Again!” team from James B. Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina weaves reuse, recycling, and waste reduction into construction of the high-efficiency electric cars it builds for Shell Eco-marathon Americas. This year, the team’s three vehicles incorporate parts of an old baby carriage, a child car seat, a chair, some PVC pipe that had been thrown away, an old banner, and discarded scooter wheels. “One man’s junk is another’s electric car,” explains Ricky Lewis, the auto technology instructor who coaches the team.
Lewis says that many of the students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, so the recycling approach teaches an important lesson: “You don’t have to have money to be successful,” he says.
The Dudley team also is highly diverse, with 10 students whose families come from five different countries, and who speak nine different languages. Lewis enjoys hearing them working together, teaching each other the names of auto parts in French, Arabic, and Spanish. “In school, they’d be separated, but this project pulls them together in problem solving,” he says.
Above, Bryan Cruz explains some of that problem-solving in action. The EV car didn’t pass technical inspection on its first go-round, so he and his teammate are sanding the tire rims to improve the braking.