The Buckeye Bullet team was launched in 2000 to provide unique, hands-on engineering challenges for Ohio State students and push electric vehicle technology.
Located at the Center for Automotive Research, these custom-built, student-designed vehicles have broken numerous land speed records. In 2004, Buckeye Bullet 1, which ran on nickel metal hydride batteries, set a national land speed record with an average speed of 315 miles per hour (mph)/506.9 kilometers per hour (kph). Venturi Buckeye Bullet 2, the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell-powered land speed electric vehicle, set the international record of 303 mph/487.6 kph in 2009. In 2016, Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3 again broke the international land speed record with an average top speed of 341.4 mph/549.4 kph. These races took place at Bonneville Speedway in Utah.
These teams have been led by Giorgio Rizzoni, professor for the College of Engineering and director of the Center for Automotive Research and David Cooke, senior associate director of the Center for Automotive Research.