Student Team Achieves More than 1900 Miles Per Gallon at the First Shell Eco-marathon(TM) Americas

Student Team Achieves More than 1900 Miles Per Gallon at the First Shell Eco-marathon(TM) Americas

Challenge featured a range of student-built vehicles powered by hydrogen, solar, ethanol blend and gasoline powered engines

Students from the across the U.S. and Canada competed today at the first Shell Eco-marathon(TM) Americas. Shell challenged the engineering students to drive their vehicles the farthest distance using the least amount of fuel, either conventional or alternative. While all of the teams accomplished impressive fuel economy figures, team Cal Poly San Luis Obispo won the challenge with an astonishing 1902.7 miles per gallon.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070414/CLSA017-a

http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20070414/CLSA017-b )

“It’s important to be involved in programs like the Shell Eco-marathon to make people aware of what we can achieve in future transportation,” said Mechanical Engineering major Tom Heckel, team manager for Cal Poly’s Super Mileage team. “I hope teams like ours will help shape the vehicles people drive years from now and those vehicles will be more environmentally friendly.”

The following is the student team results from today’s event:

Grand Prize
Cal Poly Team (San Luis Obispo, CA) at 1902.7 miles per gallon

Combustion Engine Group
1st place: Cal Poly Team (San Luis Obispo, CA) at 1902.7 miles per gallon
2nd place: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, IN) at
1637.2 miles per gallon
3rd place: Mater Dei High School (Evansville, IN) at 1596 miles per
gallon

Hydrogen Group
1st place: Los Altos Academy of Engineering (Hacienda Heights, CA) at
1038 miles per gallon