{"id":489067,"date":"2010-03-30T09:58:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T13:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.caranddriver.com\/?p=17808"},"modified":"2010-03-30T09:58:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T13:58:28","slug":"2010-shell-eco-marathon-americas-winner-hits-2487-5-mpg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/489067","title":{"rendered":"2010 Shell Eco-Marathon Americas Winner Hits 2487.5 MPG"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Universite<\/a><\/p>\n

A team of students from the Universit\u00e9 Laval in Quebec won the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas for the second year in a row by achieving fuel mileage of 2487.5 miles per gallon of gasoline. They won the event last year with an even more impressive figure of 2757.1 mpg; the drop is likely due to previous Eco-Marathons being held at race tracks with smoother pavement than that found at this year’s competition, which used real-world streets for the first time.<\/p>\n

In addition to the overall title, the Canadian team\u2019s vehicle (shown above) also won the Prototype class, which is made up of three-wheeled streamliners powered by gasoline, diesel, or ethanol internal-combustion engines; solar arrays; or hydrogen fuel cells. The UrbanConcept class\u2014which was won by a team from Mater Dei High School in Evansville, Indiana, with a 437.2-mpg figure\u2014can use any of those power sources but has a few more restrictions; four wheels, doors, lights, cargo space, and two seats are required, making the resulting entries a bit more recognizable as cars. These cars also are required to make three 10-second pit stops that are meant to more accurately depict stop-and-go city driving.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mater<\/a><\/p>\n

I had a chance to visit the competition site on Friday during practice runs, and spoke with the officials and some teams. Here\u2019s what I found out:<\/p>\n

What\u2019s this competition about?<\/strong>
\nThe Eco-Marathon is a student competition put on by Shell to try to get kids thinking about how we can do more with less energy. Competitions like this one are held in Europe, North America, and, for the first time this year, Asia.<\/p>\n

How do you get an mpg figure for a solar-powered car?<\/strong>
\nThat was one of my first questions. All energy use is normalized to miles per gallon of 87-octane gas for the purposes of comparison. They could report the results in megajoules per mile, but that doesn\u2019t have quite the same ring to it. Those who do use gasoline get by on the amounts so tiny (about a tablespoon) that they\u2019re measured to an accuracy of plus or minus 0.01 ml.<\/p>\n

What are the race conditions like?<\/strong>
\nThis year\u2019s track was a 0.6-mile loop around Discovery Green park in downtown Houston. Vehicles have to average a minimum speed of 15 mph for 10 laps\u2014they can go faster but it\u2019ll just use more fuel. (OK, so perhaps Eco-Marathon <\/em>isn\u2019t quite the right descriptor.)<\/p>\n

The top teams only \u201cburn\u201d their engines for a few seconds per lap, coasting and trying to keep up momentum the rest of the time. One of the officials estimated that the cars get up to around 25 mph, coast back to 10, and repeat as necessary. Some even use GPS plots of the track to model driver behavior and determine precisely when to burn, and for how long. Pretty sophisticated stuff. (I had the chance to drive around the track in an UrbanConcept vehicle that Shell built. I don’t know what my exact mileage was, but I am<\/em> completely certain I didn’t get 437.2 mpg.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in it for Shell?<\/strong>
\nShell doesn\u2019t actually aim to gain any knowledge from the teams; the company organizes the event and helps defray travel costs, but it doesn\u2019t stick its nose into precisely how the teams are accomplishing the task beyond ensuring entrants meet the letter of the rules.<\/p>\n

\"University<\/a><\/p>\n

And the kids?<\/strong>
\nThe students get to work real hard on what looks like a fun project that provides some almost-real-world engineering experience. They also retain the rights to their intellectual property, which some of them take to real industry jobs.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/strong>
\nThe rules likely will evolve for 2011 and include a separate electric mobility class (solar, fuel cells, and plug-ins) so that the vehicles can be compared more fairly. And the mpg numbers probably will go up.<\/p>\n

Granted, these student-built vehicles are much smaller and lighter than anything we\u2019d care to commute in, but the numbers they\u2019re getting out of them are still very impressive. Congratulations to all of the 42 student teams that competed in this year\u2019s Eco-marathon.<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 2011 Ford Mustang V6 Rated at 31 mpg Highway<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. The Truth About EPA City \/ Highway MPG Estimates – Feature<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Karmic Correction? Is Fisker\u2019s 100-mpg Promise Running on Empty?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A team of students from the Universit\u00e9 Laval in Quebec won the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas for the second year in a row by achieving fuel mileage of 2487.5 miles per gallon of gasoline. They won the event last year with an even more impressive figure of 2757.1 mpg; the drop is likely due to previous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6407,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6407"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}