UAF Engineers win top honors.

• Author: Pounds, Nancy
• Position: INSIDE ALASKA BUSINESS

The University of Alaska Fairbanks' Society of Automotive Engineers team took top honors in the zero emissions category of the 2012 SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge held at Michigan Technical University in Houghton, Mich., in March. The win earned one member of the team an invite from the National Science Foundation to travel to Greenland with the snowmachine and offer clean transportation at research sites.

The challenge presented in the zero emissions category was to convert a standard snowmachine to one that uses battery power and has zero emissions, while reducing noise and maintaining low cost and performance. Judged by price, weight, range, performance/drivability, cold start, static display and noise...