Students from Ohio State University earned top honors at the 2009 finals of the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge competition in Toronto, Canada for their design of a Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV). OSU took first place out of 17 universities in the U.S. and Canada that competed in the first major milestone of this three-year competition which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, General Motors, and many others including the Government of Canada.