Students' Eco Car Gets 2,752 Miles Per Gallon
With gas prices what they are these days, everyone is looking for a car that will get them as many miles to the gallon as possible. So how does 2,752 MPG sound?
A group of mechanical engineering students at California Polytechnic State University is all set to enter the Shell Eco-Marathon competition with an ultra high-mileage, three-wheeled car that boasts over 2,500 miles per gallon.
Wired reports that the Cal Poly team is actually working on two vehicles for the student competition; the Black Widow (pictured), and a new three-wheeler for the contest's Urban Concept division. The Black Widow took first place in the 2007 Eco-Marathon and second place in 2008 and 2009 so to say these guys know what they're doing would be an understatement.
It's the Black Widow that boasts the impressive 2752.3 miles per gallon. The car weighs just 96 pounds, has a drag coefficient of 0.12 and can reach 30 mph with a modified 3 horsepower Honda 50cc four-stroke engine. Team leader Verent Chan said the car is capable of faster speeds but they're keeping it at around 30 mph because they want to maximize on fuel efficiency.
"The car is capable of higher speeds, but the fastest we’ve ever taken it is somewhere around 35 mph,” Chan admits. “This is because we are trying to maximize the fuel efficiency for the competition. If we wanted to reach higher speeds, the engine has enough power. We would just need to set up our gear ratios differently," he explained.
Road conditions this year are slightly different but team leader Mr. Chan said the guys are still shooting for first place.
"In the past, the competition has been held on closed race tracks, but this year, it is in downtown Houston,” said Chan. “Road conditions will be worse, which may negatively affect our fuel economy, but we still are aiming for the No. 1 spot."
Read the full story on Wired.
- Man Confined to Steel Box, Video Streams Online
- This Week's Top 10 BitTorrent Movies
- Valve: We're Not Making Crappy Party Games
- Jedi Mouse Doesn't Require the Force, only Mind
- FCC Filings Point Toward PS3 Slim Refreshes
- Apple Cuts 5,000 Sexy Apps (But Playboy Stays)
- Apple to Start iPad Pre-Orders This Week
- Wha? NASA Releases Its Own iPhone Game
- Sony to Charge $20 to Used SOCOM PSP Buyers
- Natal to Launch in October with Lag Time of 1/10s
- Shanzai Creating PSP Phone Clone
- Apple Responds to Recent App Banning
- Weird LED Disco Shoes Come with Attached Floor
- Microsoft and Amazon Sign Kindle, Linux Deal
- Sony Patents Universal Game Controller
- Game Retailers Not Liking EA's Project $10 Tactics
- Doritos to Give You a Chance to be a Pro Gamer
- Capcom COO Mark Beaumont Dies Suddenly
- Google Executives Convicted for Bullying Video
Now I really regret where I went to school to get my Mechanical Engineering degree...this is awesome! An overhead shot would SO look like a penis! Apple, BAN IT!!!
What's the point of this if you're not gonna drive it on the street anyways. I mean for safety purposes. It's gonna be parked in your garage and you will be forced to drive your regular car either way.
Cool idea though.
I knew that title was too good to be true..we're not quite there yet for public roads, but perhaps one day.
What's the point of this if you're not gonna drive it on the street anyways. I mean for safety purposes. It's gonna be parked in your garage and you will be forced to drive your regular car either way.Cool idea though.
True. We need something for the regular joes...
If they just went 10 miles east toward Baytown, they could run it off the fumes in the air! (The refineries are all in that area.) Especially since Governor Perry thinks there's no need for air pollution regulations.
That's nice but frankly people been building "cars" like that for quite some time now.
After safety and other things such as able to reach highway speed and some luxuries that make a car marketable in the US and Europe i bet they could do no better then car manufactures esp at cost.
Not to mention you will never get many girls driving that thing...
But it's a thumbs up for eco technology, that's for sure.
What's the point of this if you're not gonna drive it on the street anyways. I mean for safety purposes. It's gonna be parked in your garage and you will be forced to drive your regular car either way.Cool idea though.
Same as racing cars on the track. It's all about development. These are the engineers to build tomorrow's technology, and this is how they do it.
like them, we would all get great milage if we only drove 30 and cars were tweaked for that. any takers though? didn't think so
gotta love those engineering students
(Chem-E For the Win, BTW)
I hope that this car would pass the NTSB's front end crash test.
I think it's great. I consider it the beginning of a developmental process.
2,700 mpg? Woohoo! Now I can go cross country on about 1 gallon of gas. It'll only take me about 2 weeks!....oh, wait...
Economy is better defigned as mass moved per gallon of fuel, an average semi gets ~8 mpg pulling 40,000 lbs
If the car is empty and you base the economy based on weight carried
40000/96=416 trips times 2 to move the same weight from A to B
so 2500/832=3 meaning a truck towing 40K lbs has to get 3MPG to be more effecient, this is unlikely because there needs to be someone driving it.
if I was sitting in the vehicle and it still got 30MPG
40000/296=135 trips times 2 to move the same weight from A to B
so 2500/832=9.259 meaning a truck towing 40K lbs has to get 9.3MPG to be more effecient. This shows that we are not breaking new ground here where a new truck will easily meet or beat this efficiency and it is essentially a wall moving through the air.
O and yea the Truck effeciency is based on 70MPH so this more than doubles the advantage in the trucks favor.
Economy is better defigned as mass moved per gallon of fuel, an average semi gets ~8 mpg pulling 40,000 lbs
If the car is empty and you base the economy based on weight carried
40000/96=416 trips times 2 to move the same weight from A to B
so 2500/832=3 meaning a truck towing 40K lbs has to get 3MPG to be more effecient, this is unlikely because there needs to be someone driving it.
if I was sitting in the vehicle and it still got 30MPG
40000/296=135 trips times 2 to move the same weight from A to B
so 2500/832=9.259 meaning a truck towing 40K lbs has to get 9.3MPG to be more effecient. This shows that we are not breaking new ground here where a new truck will easily meet or beat this efficiency and it is essentially a wall moving through the air.
O and yea the Truck effeciency is based on 70MPH so this more than doubles the advantage in the trucks favor.
30 mph? Pah, if you put peddles on the thing I could cycle faster than that for infinite MPG!
30 mph? Pah, if you put peddles on the thing I could cycle faster than that for infinite MPG!
So you can save 1 gallon of gas for paddling 2700 miles.
These things are research projects that help engineering students learn how to make things. It's not supposed to integrate industry standard safety features, it's half about seeing what they come up with to address the basic challenges of transportation and half exercise and experience for the minds of tomorrow so that they actually have gotten their hands dirty before getting strapped into a career.
Also I totally had a Hot Wheels car that looked just like this.
I don't know if this MPG figure is good for this particular type of car or not. I do know this type of car has been built many times in the past with really good MPG figures.
Cool.
I could go for a nice efficient bike. Too bad it's winter 8 months a year, 2 months of road repair, and 2 months of almost winter. =(
If 30 MPH is your max speed, I can beat that any day of the week. It's called a horse, and it can go faster than 30 mph, and even produces gas.
You can mount a Honda GXH 50 Engine to your bicycle as a kit, then get 150 mpg.
Or get a smaller GX35cc engine and reach near 200mpg.
I was able to personally ride from the Mexicn border to Anahiem CA on less than 1/2 gal while going 30mph - with some hills! (the fastest legal speed for a motorized bicycle)
The kit is cheap as well..
Small moterbikes and mopeds doing more than 200 mpg have been available for more than 15 years.
i went to Cal Poly Pomona, i am proud to see this. congrats guys
96 lbs for engine, chassis, axles, wheels, frames, seats... it's a coffin on wheels!
I was part of a team that entered the Shell Eco Marathon at Ripley, Mill Hill school way back in 1996/7 on a comparatively low budget. Great times - "raced" at the British F1 circuit, Silverstone out of the marble-floored Ferrari scuderia. Our petrol 35cc engined car (made from aluminium frame, balsa wood ribs and a homebrew fuel injection system) was driven by an 14-yr old kid and reigned supreme in the schools category topping 2,800 mpg. Our similar 50cc diesel car ran to 3,700mpg, around 9th in our category. I seem to remember the Japanese teams arriving with carbon-fibre wonders topping 7,500mpg. The trick was to run the engine just long enough to get up to speed and then kill it so the car coasted, then you'd start up the engine again and get back up to speed - not practical for a road car
Best of luck to the CalPoly team - you'll have a blast!
Shell eco-marathon, cause we all know that Shell is the biggest supporter for green technology.
Pray you don't get hit by a bicycle, it'll rip this thing apart.
I don't understand the point of this. Of course fuel efficiency goes up the lighter the vehicle, the better its drag coefficient, the less powerful its engine. Everybody knows that. But who would dare drive this car on a highway?
I agree that this is a great learning experience, however, It would be more practical to be working with current gen vehicles than with non-street legal carbon fiber & balsa wood deathtraps. I'd rather see 200 mpg for a 4cyl focus than 1500+ mpg for a toy.
So you can save 1 gallon of gas for paddling 2700 miles.
You make a very valid point.
LMAO TA. Such bs unless you have a racing horse. And if you pull a buggy behind it even bigger bs. Not to mention the horse would have to stop and rest. Thus the car would end up easily beating the horse, and did you not read all they have to do is change the gear ration.
And don't try to say I don't know what I'm talking about. I've lived around amish damn near all my life. It's not normal for a horse to do 30, and to be honest I'd like to see.