Snowmobilers seek funding from ASUSU

Utah State University’s Electric Snowmobile Team is hoping to put its state-of-the-art electric snowmobile in the public limelight, but is lacking a little bit of funding.

The 12-member team requested $5,770 from ASUSU’s Capital and Support Fund Tuesday that would enable them to attend the SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge in Michigan and put the electrical design of their snowmobile on the market.

“We do have the best electric snowmobile out there,” Student Team Leader Nathan Hansen said. “With more funding and more engineering efforts, this snowmobile can only get better.”

The snowmobile itself runs completely on electrical power, saving money on fuel as well as being environmentally friendly, Hansen said.

“From 100 yards away, you can’t ***WHAT WORD HERE?***the snowmobile driving in front of you,” he said.

This is first year that these undergraduate students have been working as a team on this project. Because this project is fairly new, funding is very limited, Hansen said, but if the team is able to attend the competition, their snowmobile will gain national and even international attention.

“We feel that an important part of the project is to gain recognition for what we’ve done,” he said.

The team will be competing against 15 other universities at the competition. So far, the members have worked more than 1,000 hours on the project and have requested support from 39 other organizations.

However, receiving funding from ASUSU’s Capital and Support Fund is contingent on where the team has exhausted all its other resources, including the vice president for research as well as the provost, who has not been contacted.

“It they haven’t looked into all other resources, it won’t pass,” Programming Vice President Laurel Evans said.

Quinn Millet also had questions about the formal request of the funding as well. Members of the council will research the funding request and discuss it further during their regular meeting Tuesday.

-mmackay@cc.usu.edu