While hybrid cars offer an improvement to conventional automobiles, Prof. John Callister ’96, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Prof. Max Zhang, mechanical and aerospace engineering, agree that they are not enough. Zhang, Faculty Fellow in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, said that although “hybrids are leading us to a sustainable future, [they’re] not the solution we’re looking for.”

Last Thursday, Dan Hancock, Vice President of Global Power-train Engineering at General Motors, drove to the university in a prototype automobile, and gave a lecture in Olin Hall about developmental propulsion technologies from the automobile manufacturer, General Motors. 

Hancock described three developmental programs: gas-efficient, hybrid and electric cars.