European Shell Eco Marathon Europe 2009: more than 8000 mpg!
2009 Shell Eco Marathon winners - Click above for an image gallery
The 25th edition of the Shell Eco Marathon took place last week at the German circuit of Lausitz, and quite a number of records were broken. A French team from the Lycée Saint Joseph la Joliverie in Nantes has improved upon its own record with its MicroJoule prototype, which managed to run 3771 kilometers on a single liter of gasoline. That's well over 8000 miles per gallon!
A solar-powered car, also from a French team, traveled 665 kilometers using a single kWh of electric power. In the Urban Concept category, which more closely resemble actual cars, a Norwegian university team using a hydrogen fuel cell managed to travel 1246 kilometers using just 1 kilogram of Hydrogen. The same team also took home the award to the least CO2 produced: 2.6 g/km. The top gasoline-powered car in the Urban Concept category was entered by a Danish college team and went 589 kilometers using a single liter of gasoline (1356 mpg US). Click here to see the full list of results. Awfully impressive stuff!
Gallery: European 2009 Shell Eco Marathon
[Source: Shell]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike Z 10:53AM (5/14/2009)
I think at this point, it might be interesting to factor speed into the event: IE mpg different mph. Also maybe the vehicles in different existing mpg duty cycles.
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andrichrose 11:04AM (5/14/2009)
looks very comfortable !
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Snoopy 11:08AM (5/14/2009)
Haha!
That's exactly what I was thinking. It's really cool though. The EkerDesign one looks pretty cool, even if it's a single person vehicle. I wonder what they could manage on more decently proportioned cars.
Mark 1:00PM (5/14/2009)
Why can't we make a bigger version (to hold 5 people) but keep the dynamics of it, stick in an electric motor with lithium ion battery and sell it :)
Matt 1:38PM (5/14/2009)
Yeah, who said cars had to be super comfortable all the time.. isn't that half the point of riding motorcycles? Maybe it isn't, but mine wasn't very cozy either. I would actually drive one of these if it were available and legal. Some of 'em look pretty sweet.
Ernie 4:07PM (5/14/2009)
So is a formula 1 race car. :)
This isn't about making a car that your family can ride in, it's about the engineering challenges required to make a vechicle perform to a particular specification.
Coincidentally, it's *possible* to implement nearly all of these things into a family sedan to give your car 100+ miles per gallon. But as has been demonstrated time and time again, the market doesn't want cars that seat 5 all in a straight line, with 3 skinny tires that are enclosed inside the body of the vehicle, and no suspension.
paulwesterberg 12:04PM (5/14/2009)
The event was sponsored by shell so they could use any chemical fuel they wanted, but no battery-electric cars. They want to show how far super efficient designs can go on traditional fuels.
But the shell corporation doesn't want people to know that an electric drive train in the same chassis would likely trounce traditional engines on a miles per gallon of energy equivalent.
They allowed solar cars - mostly to show that solar panels on a car can not currently provide enough electricity to move a vehicle very far very fast. But they do get infinite mpg.
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leo 1:15PM (5/14/2009)
Right, darling. I'll just out down the shops..
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NeilBlanchard 2:48PM (5/14/2009)
Hello,
Here's a picture (from: http://www.shell.com/home/content/eco-marathon-en/europe/2009/multimedia/app_2009_media.html) of the winning gasoline "Urban Concept" car from the Danish college:
http://194.20.17.16/ecomarathon/2009/media_gallery/gallery_asset/url_images/SEM09_8051522.jpg
And the winning fuel cell car:
http://194.20.17.16/ecomarathon/2009/media_gallery/gallery_asset/url_images/SEM09_9051668.jpg
Sincerely, Neil
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