Eco-Marathon Team Hits 2,843 mpg

At this year's Shell Eco-marathon Americas event the team from Mater Dei High School shattered last year's record by traveling 2,843.4 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. "How did the Evansville, Ind., team come up with its winning airfoil-meets-teardrop design and beat out its largely collegiate competitors? "It comes from trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn't," an unidentified student and team member told a local newscaster Friday. Those top three vehicles, like most in the competition (25 out of 33 total), used internal combustion engines. The goal for all entrants was to travel as far as possible using as little fuel as possible. Vehicles--sans driver--couldn't weigh more than 160 kilograms (352 pounds), while drivers had to weigh at least 50 kilograms."

Comments

Re:Better Than People

[gbulmash]

Sorry... This Video. I was changing my .sig and didn't realize that URL was on the clipboard. I'm a dumbass.

Burn and Coast

[michaelepley]

Also, an essential strategy for achieving high mileage is to burn the engine at optimum efficiency RPMs to quickly get to speed, and then use your mass combined with low aerodynamic and rolling losses to coast as long as possible (frequently almost to the point of stopping). This is why there are required average lap speeds and maximum speeds. Of course, this strategy could hardly be used in production vehicles or in public roads.

Re:Not Eligible

[atommota]

Maybe if you'd RTFA you'd see that only solar cars were excluded from the grand prize (all other fuels were ok including LP, H2, fuel cells, etc) and for a good reason. From the contest rules...

Shell Eco-marathon Americas Grand Prize - $10,000 Awarded to the educational institution or University in honor of the team who completes the farthest distance with the least amount of fuel. Because solar cars do not use "fuel" and the solar energy that is used is limitless and cannot be converted into an equivalent measure to compare to other engine types, solar cars are not eligible for the Grand Prize award. Enough with the Slashdot corporate whining already.

Calm Down

[Hubec]

The reporter got it wrong (as usual). The single entry was actually running Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) not as he reports "liquid petroleum gasoline". I believe the "combustion" class of which the winner was a part is plain old gasoline, just as the headline states.

Re:Not Eligible

[Rei]

Its Shell sponsoring it, of course non-gasoline vehicles weren't eligible for the grand prize...

Damn corporate scams for cheap publicity and easy recruitment.

Hey, now, let's put this conspiracy theory through it's paces. So, Shell is hosting this competition for cheap publicity and easy recruitment, right? Then why would they rig the race -- the ultimate example of trying to earn bad publicity and discouraging recruitment? Or, if the rigging was hoping to promote gasoline while they still get cheap publicity and easy recruitment, by trying to imply that gasoline always wins or something (I'm trying to help your theory out here), then why did they allow other fuels compete at all? To make gasoline look bad so that they can then refuse to award them the prize?

It just doesn't make sense.

Look, oil companies have done a lot of bad things in the world -- some intentional, most unintentional, but still bad. But pretending that *everything* they do must have some sort of evil hidden motive to keep the world addicted to gasoline is just ridiculous. The other day, I sat down on a park bench that had a small plaque on the side that it had been donated by Shell. Clearly, that bench was an insidious attempt to get Americans to stop walking so that they become fat and lazy and need big SUVs to support their exercise-averse lifestyle, right?

Things like this serve many purposes. Some of them can get tax deductions. Some of them are an attempt to earn good PR or recruit. Some of them are, to be quite honest, a way to allow execs to feel all warm and fuzzy that they're doing good things in the world while they keep the oil flowing. But the concept that everything they do must be a plot to keep us hooked on gasoline is just dumb.