Six years ago, I attended the first Formula Hybrid competition, sponsored by Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, at the NH Motor Speedway. It's a hybrid-car version of the long-running Formula SAE competition in which engineering students compete to build shrunken versions of racing cars under the eye of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

It was a very interesting mishmash of parallel vs. hybrid, battery vs. capacitor tech. As I recall, only a couple of the teams could even make the cars run that first year, but things have changed.

Next week (Apr. 30-May4) will see the 6th annual competition. Thirty-six teams have registered, including one each from Canada, Taiwan, Spain and Brazil. Seven will compete in the electric-only category, which is new.