Around 100 engineering students from the country’s top universities, who don’t let their schooling interfere with their education, trooped to the General Motors proving grounds in the outskirts of Mesa, Arizona as participants to this year’s edition of the GM-sponsored Challenge X.

With the temperature at the tarmac sputtering to 115 and the competition supposedly not granting any academic credits to the participants, it was some thing to see the young men and women get their hands dirty for a trifling accolade as winner of the Challenge X.

Now on its third year, the Challenge X competition seeks to explore clean and efficient automotive technologies. This year’s edition was billed as “Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility,” and presented by GM in collaboration with the academe and the US Department of Energy.

Challenge X puts 17 US universities to test in reengineering the Chevrolet Equinox, a crossover sports utility vehicle, to minimize energy consumption, emissions, and greenhouse gases while maintaining or exceeding the vehicle’s utility and performance.

GM supplied the teams with the vehicle for modification, threw in $10,000 seed money for each team, donated production parts such as engines and transmissions, provided engineering consulting for each team, competition facilities, operational support and $20,000 in prize money.

But there’s one caveat: with the increased fuel economy of the Chevrolet equinox, it must maintain the performance, utility, creature comforts and safety attributes consumers want. And, the vehicle’s total package has to be feasibly produced at a price that buyers wouldn’t walk away from.

List of participants include the Michigan Technological University, Mississippi State University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, San Diego State University, Texas Tech University, University of Akron, University of California, Davis, University of Michigan, University of Tennessee, University of Texas at Austin, University of Tulsa, University of Waterloo, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Virginia Tech, West Virginia University.