8128 miles Per (US) Gallon

idletask writes: "Yes, you read well. This is the new record established this year in the Shell International Mileage Marathon (NOTE: English link, their figures are calculated using UK gallons), held this year on June 1st and 2nd on the Circuit of Nogaro, by a team from Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France. This yearly contest, sponsored by Shell since 1977, consists in travelling the longest distance with only one liter of gas (the record is therefore actually 3494km with 1 liter), at a minimum pace of 25kph (~15mph). Full results of the contest can be found in a PDF file. The only US team who participated this year scored 69th, with 1136mpg (483km with 1l)."

Comments

Measurements

[Wrexen]

I know some of you are having a tough time with the miles-per-gallon or kilometers-per-liter measurement, so I've taken the liberty of converting this to a useful measurement we can all relate to.

Simply put, 483km/1L is 1.2425 x 10^-6 earth-moon distances per cubic centimeter of fuel. I think that puts in it perspective

Ummm

[snubber1]

Of course 2171 actual miles on one liter of fuel would probally NOT scale very well when you are carying 4x the fuel at the beginning (One gallon instead of one liter). With numbers like this, weight must be a very important consideration.

Supermileage

[Tablespork]

I participated in the Minnesota Technology Education Association's Supermileage Challenge in May. It was basically the same thing except it was just a bunch of high school teams. It really is a great competition, I learned a lot and had tons of fun.
My team ended up with a top mileage of 305 mpg, this was for the stock class. Fairly good considering we had limited time, budget, and experience.
The way our competition worked is this: Each team is given a fuel bottle and it is weighed before the start. You then go around 2 laps (of the 3 mile track at Brainerd International Raceway) for a total of 6 miles. They then weigh your fuel bottle again to determine how much gas is used (making sure there are no air bubbles in the fuel line). This ends up a pretty accurate way of determining gas mileage. The weight of the gas really shouldn't matter that much, since more weight would mean you carry your momentum longer. You have to complete 6 runs and they take the average of that.
Now since we are high school students, our main goal was to build a working car. You then focus on aerodynamics, good bearings so it rolls well, wheel alignment, steering, and driving practice. Getting practice is key. Not only to determine what will break, but also to get good at controlling your burns. Short burns at high rpm's get you up to speed(roughly 30, which was the max), at which point you cut the engine and coast down to around 10(you have to maintain an average of 15). By the end of the 2 day competition, you saw drivers getting very good at rolling to a stop inches over the finish line.
It was a really fun competition, we saw some very cool cars with everything from carbon fiber bodies, to computer sensors and lcd displays mounted on the steering wheel, and you could download all the data to a computer for analysis. Sweet stuff.