The winner of this year’s Shell Eco-marathon successfully smashed a five-year old record by a staggering 1,060 kilometres.
The event held last week in Germany saw the winning team set a new fuel efficiency record of 4,414km km/l on the very first day of the event. It smashed the old record of 3,836km/l set by ETH Zurich of Switzerland back in 2005.
The French team from Polytech’ Nantes then went on to smash their own record adding a adding a further 482 kilometres to their tally for a new all-time record of 4,896.1km/l on the final day of the event. This distance covered is roughly the equivalent of driving from the head to toe of Europe, from the North Cape in Norway down to the toe of the Italian peninsula.
Commenting on the outstanding achievements of the 2010 edition, Niel Golightly, Vice President Downstream Communications, Royal Dutch Shell, said: “This year demonstrates that repeat teams are taking on the learnings from past events to research how they can apply them to their own projects. This has been key in driving the innovations that we see are delivering such outstanding results and creating records that were only just a couple of years ago beyond our wildest dreams.”
The team drove a small hydrogen fuel cell car which they entered in the ‘Prototype’ category.
The event allows entrants to partake in one of two categories, one is the Prototype category for more futuristic designs and the other is the Urban Concept category designed for more roadworthy vehicles.
Shell holds three Eco Marathon challenges globally, one in Europe, one in Asia and one in the Americas. This year the European event kicked off on Thursday (May 6), and welcomed some 185 teams from over 20 countries from across Europe in front of an audience of more than 4,000 students, journalists, stakeholders and staff. The Americas event ran last month, with the winning team achieving more than 2,000mpg (see story).
The Shell Eco-marathons are challenges open to high school and college student teams from around the world to design, build and test energy efficient vehicles. The winner is the team that goes the furthest distance using the least amount of energy.
