Macfound. Org. Additional funding is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. And by tfrontline journalism fund, supporting investigative reporting and enterprise journalism. Major funding for this program is provided by the bill and Melinda Gates foundation. And by the corporation for public broadcasting and its American Graduate Initiative for middle School Moment. Be good. I wont. Yeah, i know. My ninth grade year was probably the worst because i was constantly being beaten up and, you know, jumped and everything. I was pretty much an outcast. Constantly in the office, like, literally every day. There were jumpings. Somebody at the school got stabbed with a protractor and that was, like, the first two or three weeks of school. Tenth grade year, i was only at school for a month, and that was just an accumulated 30 days, not even a month straight because i had to babysit for my younger sister while my mom was at work. So, i missed a complete year of school. Truancy never knocked on our door, never gave us letters, never did anything. sirens its disgraceful what is going on in Public Education in philadelphia. In most large urban cities, 50 of the kids are dropping out. Almost every large urban district is dysfunctional. Philadelphia is at the highest level of dysfunction. There was a need to engage students. The normal curriculum is boring, and kids are disinterested. Today what we are going to do, the first thing is we are going to move the gt over here. All right . Ready one, two, three. So, the evx team is an afterSchool Program. We build and design hybrid and electric vehicles. We had success the very first year. The students won the local science fair which was a first for. For students from West Philadelphia high school. From there, it just organically grew. Here, put it over here. The mission of the evx team this year is to be serious competitors in the automotive x prize. The automotive x prize is a 10 million competition thats invited teams from around the world to develop viable vehicles that get over 100 miles per gallon. Were the only high school in the world that has thrown our hat in the ring. To all the other teams in the x prize competition, you are going to lose. You know, we tell kids you can do anything, and as adults we know that there are limits. But we started to feed into it yeah, we can do anything. Whats the purpose of the progressive automotive x prize . Yes . Justin . To cause people to go into competition so that they can create something new and better for the environment. Excellent. So, were building two cars. The significant points are they use alternative fuels, they get over 100 miles a gallon, and High School Students built them and theyre being entered in this huge competition. But, at the top of this, were building cars to demonstrate that. I was working in the lab at general electric, and i just kind of had an epiphany that this isnt what i wanted to do with my life. It was a series of events and i ended up feeling like i wanted to be a teacher in the city. And whats the mission of the team . I grew up a couple blocks from West Philadelphia high school, so yeah, the issues of the city are very near and dear to my heart. The team ranges from allstars in the classroom to students who really struggle. There is room for everyone, and we have all sorts of types of students, and thats one of the things im really proud about. Beginning of last school year, i cut every single class. Im not even gonna lie. I was just the guy that showed up when i wanted to show up. Say, all right, justin. My life wasnt going the way i expected it to, so if nobody was gonna care, why should i . I truly believe that without the evx team, i dont know if he wouldve been able to survive the 11th and 12th grade years in public school. Mom, youre gonna want to put some oil in the car. What about trans . The evx team was a saving grace for him. They basically blanketed him with attention, with understanding, and with affection, you know. They cared. My work with the evx team has made me want to come to school more. It gave me something to care about. This is the k1 attack, the pride and joy of west philly high. We plan to do it again with our next car, but this here. I mean, the first time i ever seen this car, it was my ninth grade year. I remember it was, like, my first day of school. I came walking through the shop, and i didnt expect to see a racecar here. And i fell in love with it then, and thats. Thats why i had to join the ev team. Like, who built this car . They said it was built here. As High School Students, we can be innovative. We can be just as innovative as the ceos of ford, gm, honda, nissan. We can be just as innovative as them. And we dont even have diplomas yet. Yo im home. You know, i dont want my children to do the job that im doing. I want them to have better because they are better than me. And i know theyre better than me. Therefore, my job is justjust to give them the umbrella, you know, to grow, to do whatever you want to do. Whats up, whats up, whats up, whats up, whats up . This is jacques as a little guy. And as youll see, quite a few of the awards that he has received. The ford motor company. Student auto skills. The West Philadelphia hybrid x team. Honor roll, mathlete. Hes student of the month. Jacques just started running, he started running with it. And it was, it was, it was like he became a leader without knowing he was a leader, which is a great thing. To be honest, the things that hes doing is making me. Actually inspires me in a lot of ways. Its taught me how not to give up, to be a fighter. Dont give up, no matter what happens. Dont give up. And i love him for that, love him for that. Uh, yeah, i love him for that. Yeah. Ill see you, dad. All rht, be good, man. Usually, it tends to be the oddballs and the smart ones who drift towards the team because the opportunities they offer, so thats why the evx team is filled with a bunch of odd guys and smart people. I went back to school. Essentially they put me in remedial classes because of my absences. One day, while getting bored of these, you know, multiplying fraction worksheets, cut class and i saw hauger in the hallway. And haugers like, what the hell are you doing in here . Its like, well, they put me in opp. He shook his head, and was like, you know what . Come to auto after school and, uh, i want to talk to you. Hauger, that day, changed my roster to put me back into auto and. On the conditions that, one, i pass my classes and, two, i join the ev team. You know, thats the crappiest tape job ive ever seen. Youre all fired. She was a student who was on the verge of literally failing. And we brought her over here, sort of adopted her into the family, and then, you know, we realized that samantha was a bright young lady who just needed support and a group of caring adults around her to really help her find her way. To see samantha go from failing grades to a student who made the honor roll is hard to really capture into words. Id say they believed in me, essentially. And thats changed my life because if i wouldve continued in west, i wouldve totally, completely dropped out because i wasnt learning in the classes they had me in. Thats this, right . You guys have got that part figured out. Intelligence is exhibited in so many different ways. Students need to be engaged in different ways. Were entering two vehicles in the x prize. We are under a really tight timeline. We have one year to get these cars built and trackready. Its a tall order. The gtm is just basically our fun car. You know, the cool car that people will love to drive, but its a hybrid, so thats, like, a double bonus. Basically, we put more of the young peoples point of view inside the car. The gtm, i mean, zero to 60 in under five seconds. You know, top speeds of about 180. 250 horsepower. I dont think theres any other hybrids with statistics like that. The focus, the family car that were entering in the competition, its probably the only ford focus with a motorcycle engine in it. Its a motor. Its a harley hybrid, as some people call it. We have a Harley Davidson engine in it, and an electric motor. Simon is. Hes completely crazy. There is nothing that he thinks we cant do. I mean, who the hell else wouldve thought of using a Harley Davidson engine and a magnetic clutch from a combine coupled to an electric motor . The answer to that question is no one. This is the original engine that ford put in this car. Were gonna get rid of all this weight, and all this spaghetti and everything else. And this is what were going to put back in. Were gonna use an electric motor. Were gonna hook up that gasoline engine, and the two of them together will give us unbelievable efficiency, and not only that, but the car will run extremely clean. This might even be more ghetto than usual. We found milk crates. I think were gonna build the, uh, the prototype battery box out of milk crates, so its a new low for us. So, we have to get everything in the car, the battery packs, make sure the motors are running, just to make sure that we can test it out before the competition. Theres a little mathematical formula that tells us how much current this is gonna put out. Its gonna put out as much as it can. Weve got to be very careful how we assemble this battery pack because once we put a few batteries together and hook them together, theres enough voltage there to actually kill somebody. We dont have Million Dollar computers that run cad software simulations. We dont have 70 engineers like cornell university, and you can assign 20 this and 20 that. We have chalkboards, we have pencils, paper. We have grinders. And whiteboards that dont work. We have pressers. We have grinders, we have torchers. How we doing, son . Good man. Im competitive, but im not that competitive. You know, theres some people that just are super competitive, and thats not what drives me. What drives me its going to sound really corny what drives me is i love kids. I love working with kids and i believe in them. Oh, is everything already connected . Oh and we can power that up. Today were connecting the batteries to the electric motor after working on it for weeks, which is just really exciting. Azeem is the emergency turn off switch. So if we have a problem, hes going to turn off the power. Ive got haugers life in my hands. humming its a really incomparable feeling. When i connect the battery pack to the motor, i feel like im giving our car life. Haugers one of those people, like, especially coming up from how i came up, dealing with the School System and dealing with just people trying to save, you know, us, you know, troubled people, i feel like. You know what im saying . Like people who treat, like, urban youth in these bad schools is like, these kids who need to be saved. Hauger would never, you know, treat me like that. Hed never treat anybody like that. Hed treat us like, youre. Like, i already know what you can do. So do it. See, heres the problem. We have to move this this many inches, and the bearing block for that one. Connecting the Harley Davidson to our electric motor is critical. Its actually a quite complicated engineering feat that were pulling off. Tuesday, we started to put this together. We ran into a problem mounting them exactly straight. They have to be a Perfect Match together. If theyre off just a little bit, the vibration will just selfdestruct the whole. The whole power train. Simon, how about the. Simon . Yeah . How about the inside . You know what, do you want to give it a shot to see if it will turn. Simon, just take a peek at it. And away she goes. Simon, look at that. Not as bad. Film that, fellas film that, fellas thats not bad we made really good progress. We got the electric motor and the Harley Davidson engine the whole hybrid drive train together. We got the shafts lined up better, we had made some adjustments. We still have a few more things to machine so that we can get them perfect, but it actually ran a little better than we had expected. The mayors coming today. Oh, thank you so much for coming. Were very, very excited about you being here. How do you build a car . This is how you build a car . So i should read this tonight . For all the accolades we have received around the technology, what we would really like to see this work be celebrated for is the power it has in education. And. And thats our dream. We hope that we get an opportunity to run a school like this, thats projectbased, thats not satisfied with 50 of the kids dropping out, but see Graduation Rates of 90plus percent. The students that have come through this program have gone on to do great things. Now to a group of High Schoolers are setting out to prove that it doesnt take an automotive giant to build a fuelefficient car. Its 10 million. You know, you throw that together with urban High School Students, and that put us in the national spotlight. Anyone can do anything if you put your mind to it. Are you worried about the competition at all, guys . No. It was one of those this is it moments the National Attention that we got from that was really, i think, humbling because it wasnt like were gonna win from getting that. Like, we gotta work even harder. So, like, now we have to prove ourself to the rest of the country that were gonna win. Both of these cars need to run today, both of these cars we have to get emission data today. It has to be turned in to the x prize foundation. And if we dont do. Get that done, we could very possibly be knocked out of the competition. Everybody is exhausted. The kids are exhausted, the staff is exhausted. Tensions are as high as they could get right now because this car hasnt. This car, weve seen the wheels turn, but weve never actually rolled the car down the street. Why do we have voltage here . Uh, time out. Right now, were having some electrical issues and some programming issues. Do it again. Are you guys clear . Nothing. I quite often feel like we cant do this. I feel like were in over our heads. Our batterys dead. Friggin crap. This one . Yeah. Ive had bad days where i wonder what i got this Team Involved in. All right. So, try the black one. Yeah,. 35. Yeah, thats the one. Sorry, we got them backwards. Dont stand in front of the car. engine roars to life applause there is a lot of stress and anxiety today, and then relief. We just got in under the wire. And its exciting. We have all this backup stuff just in case something goes wrong. We have lots of tires, lots of tool parts, lots of things that im not even used to looking at. Its exciting. All right everybody, all aboard. Im pretty excited. I am not looking forward to the tenhour car ride, i have to say, but i guess it will be pretty fun, jokes and what not in the van. Okay, so now were, like, 15 minutes past the leave time. A charleston chew. Baby ruths all the way woo hoo Tastykakes Tastykakes gimme my tastykakes i got a bunch of crazy kids that are gonna be riding with me, so i dont know what to expect. So, uh, question, how many other young, urban African American teens will be up there for us to socialize with . I can answer that question none. Jeez. Were in the semifinals of the competition. Its really exciting to be here. Theres only 22 teams left out of 111 original teams. And so this is the best of the best. brakes screeching if you had asked me going to this competition, do you think a High School Team, let alone an inner City High School team, could enter a viable car in the competition, let alone two cars in two different categories . The answer would have been no. I mean, in the dictionary where they define underdog, theyve got the evx team as an example. Hey, arent you guys that High School Team that built those cars . Justin, you can work with me on this. Okay, fuel, all right . So we gonna be aware that were soldering over fuel. One of the things that happens when you build something, create something new isis inevitably we use every last moment. And so theres always the lastminute rush to tie up loose ends. We gotta switch this over. Checkoff list, lets take a quick walkthrough. It was a very busy day. I mean, today was our first day actually been able to work on the cars in the garage. And, like, as soon as we got there, they put us straight to work. Hey, sam this is your job take off that cisco sticker. Were getting a different one. So tell us quickly, just tell us who you are. Im simon hauger. Im the director of the west philly hybrid x team. Where does your team kind of fit into all this and how did you end up here . Well, thats a long story. Weve been in other competitions, and this was. It was really eyeopening to see teams that have halfbilliondollar budgets up close. So, its this team here, aptera, they pulled up an 18 wheeler with their lawn chairs and their team of 50 engineers or whatever they had. Its a little overwhelming because you see cars that look better than ours. You see cars that, in my opinion, dont look as good as our cars. And it really starts to sink in how this is really a global competition. So, these are, like, global ideas coming, you know, together. It was pretty interesting to see, like, the different designs of all of the cars from around the world. I mean, and to just be competing against all these companies with great names, its like its an honor, really. Because you know, these guys are. Likelike. Geniuses with, like, engineering degrees. Excuse me, sir, about how much does this car weigh . Uh, it went through check at 711 pounds. 700 . Is this with or without the motor . With the engine. You can push this car with your thumb. And thats the really crazy thing. So, if i can push it with my thumb, it doesnt take a lot of power to move. So, the idea behind the car is make it really light and really aerodynamically efficient. Because thats really only way you can make a car efficient. Oliver stopped by. Hes the founder of the edison2 team. He had an automotive teacher in high school that changed his life. And. And so, the work that were doing. The real work that were doing around education really resonates with him. And after its done, he was right. As an immigrant child at age 14, not really knowing how to speak engli