Ed. Note: Cross-posted with Energy Blog
Since childhood, Lynn Gantt has had a deep seeded passion for cars and the mechanics that drive them. The Virginia native spent his weekends rebuilding antique tractors with his dad to race at tractor pulls across the state, and now the Virginia Tech graduate student is the proud team co-leader of Virginia Tech’s EcoCAR Challenge team—the winners of the three-year long competition, as announced last night at an awards ceremony in Washington, DC.
Lynn grew up around mechanics and engineering, which is why he says the Mechanical Engineering undergrad and graduate programs at Virginia Tech were a perfect fit for him. In addition to the family hobby of rebuilding antique tractors, Lynn’s dad runs a small electrical contracting business (Swing Electrical Company) out of Newport News, VA, and his older brother is an auto mechanic at a car dealership. “Clearly this program was just a natural fit for me,” he says.
Lynn has been a member of the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) for all three years of the EcoCAR Challenge, which began his senior year in Fall 2008. As the only remaining original Virginia Tech participant, Lynn has spent the last three years working with teams of 25 student volunteers modifying the team’s 2009 Saturn Vue—which the team aptly named the VT-REX (for Virginia Tech – Range Extended Crossover) . The car was donated to each of the 16 teams by General Motors, who partnered with Department of Energy to sponsor the competition and its predecessor, Challenge X.
Fonte: White House