Eco-marathon
Encyclopedia
The Eco-Marathon is an annual competition sponsored by Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

, in which participants build special vehicles to achieve the highest possible fuel efficiency
Fuel efficiency
Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the efficiency of a process that converts chemical potential energy contained in a carrier fuel into kinetic energy or work. Overall fuel efficiency may vary per device, which in turn may vary per application, and this spectrum of variance is...

. The Eco-Marathon is held around the world with events in Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, and the USA. The event also took place in the UK until 2010.

The events are entered by a range of participants from enthusiastic amateurs to university teams and major motor manufacturers with a variety of designs. The only two motor manufacturers to have any success in the event have been Ford and Honda
Honda
is a Japanese public multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles.Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, as well as the world's largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines measured by volume, producing more than...

.

A world record was set by a French team in 2003 called Microjoule with a performance of 10705 mpgimp. The current record is 12665 mpgU.S. (5,384.4 km/L), set in 2005 by the PAC-Car II. The word record in diesel efficiency was achieved by the spanish team of the politechnical University of Valencia in 2010 with 1396.8 kilometres per litre. In contrast, the most efficient diesel
Diesel engine
A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...

 passenger cars achieve 60 mpgU.S. (26 km/L), and some high-powered sportscars achieve as little as 8 mpgU.S. (3 km/L).

History

The event's history stretches back nearly seventy years. In 1939, a group of Shell scientists based in a research laboratory in Wood River, Illinois, USA, had a friendly bet to see who could drive their own car furthest on one gallon of fuel. At the time, 21.12 km/L (49.7 mpgU.S.) was the best that could be achieved.

Other Achievements:
  • 149.95 MPG with a 1947 Studebaker in 1949
  • 244.35 MPG with a 1959 Fiat 600 in 1968
  • 376.59 MPG with a 1959 Opel in 1973.


That idea was the foundation for the first international competition held in Mallory Park
Mallory Park
Mallory Park is a motor racing circuit situated in the village of Kirkby Mallory, just off the A47, between Leicester and Hinckley. With the full car circuit measuring only 1.35 miles it is amongst the shortest permanent race circuits in the UK...

 in the UK in 1977, (1976 international competition "Pisaralla Pisimmälle" was held in Finland (Keimola)).

Over the past 30 years, fuel economy
Fuel economy in automobiles
Fuel usage in automobiles refers to the fuel efficiency relationship between distance traveled by an automobile and the amount of fuel consumed....

 has improved dramatically. Shell points out that "it would be possible for the winning Shell Eco-Marathon UK car to travel three times around the equator on the same amount of fuel that Concorde
Concorde
Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde was a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport . It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation...

 needed to reach the end of the runway."

The current European Shell Eco-marathon http://www.shell.com/home/content/ecomarathon/europe/ record for a combustion engine entry was set in 2004 by the team from Lycée La Joliverie (France) at 3,410 km on the equivalent of a single litre of fuel. For prototype vehicles using fuel cells, the record is even more impressive. In 2005, the hydrogen-powered vehicle built by Swiss team ETH Zurich achieved a projected 3,836 km on the equivalent of a single litre of fuel. This is the equivalent of driving from Paris to Moscow!

The Competition

The Eco-Marathon has different classes of competition: Fuel cell
Fuel cell
A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used...

-powered, solar cell
Solar cell
A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....

-powered, gasoline
Gasoline
Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...

-fueled, diesel-fueled, and LPG
Autogas
Autogas is the common name for liquefied petroleum gas when it is used as a fuel in internal combustion engines in vehicles as well as in stationary applications such as generators. It is a mixture of propane and butane....

-fueled. During the competition, cars must attain an average speed of at least 15 mph (23 km/h) over a distance of 10 miles (16 km). The course is typically a motor racing track—for the pan-European meet, the Circuit Paul Armagnac
Circuit Paul Armagnac
Circuit Paul Armagnac is a motorsport race track near Nogaro in southwestern France. The track was built in 1960. The venue hosted the French round of the Grand Prix motorcycle road racing world championship in 1978 and 1982, as well as the 2003 round of the FIA Sportscar Championship. It also...

 in Nogaro, France, for the English meet, the infield automobile competition course at Rockingham Motor Speedway
Rockingham Motor Speedway
Rockingham is the UK's most modern motorsport venue and Europe's fastest racing circuit, hosting corporate driving days, driver training, conferencing & exhibitions, vehicle manufacturing events, track days, testing, driving experiences and motorsport...

 in Corby, and in the Americas the competition formerly used the course at the California Speedway
California Speedway
Auto Club Speedway is a two-mile , low-banked, D-shaped oval superspeedway in Fontana, California which has hosted NASCAR racing annually since 1997. The track was also used for open wheel racing events until 2005. The racetrack is located near the former locations of Ontario Motor Speedway and...

 in Fontana. Though now the Americas automobile competition takes place at Discovery Green
Discovery Green
Discovery Green is a public park in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. Opened in 2008, Discovery Green is located on Avenida de las Americas across from the George R. Brown Convention Center and the Hilton Americas Hotel, adjacent to Toyota Center...

 in Houston, Texas. The fuel is strictly measured out for each entrant. At the end of the course, the amount of fuel used is measured; from that figure, fuel economy is calculated.

The marathon includes a set of rules to create a set of safe conditions for the event. Some of the rules for the event may encourage participants to enter vehicles that use hydrocarbon-based fuel sources. For instance, the Eco-marathon places solar-powered vehicles in their own class and are excluded from winning the $10,000 grand prize.

Another rule eliminates the use of an EGR valve, which reduces greenhouse gases in internal combustion engines. The marathon requires entrants to use Shell oil products exclusively when gasoline or diesel fuel are the sources of energy.

Entrants

The top performing vehicles are specially designed for high efficiency. Some vehicles use a coast/burn technique whereby they briefly accelerate from 10 to 20 mph (from 16 to 32 km/h) and then switch the engine off and coast for approximately 2 minutes until the speed drops back down to 10 mph (16 km/h). This process is repeated resulting in average speed of 15 mph for the course. Typically the vehicles have:
  • Automobile drag coefficients (Cd) < 0.1
  • Rolling resistance
    Rolling resistance
    Rolling resistance, sometimes called rolling friction or rolling drag, is the resistance that occurs when a round object such as a ball or tire rolls on a flat surface, in steady velocity straight line motion. It is caused mainly by the deformation of the object, the deformation of the surface, or...

     coefficients < 0.0015
  • Weight without driver of < 45 kg
  • Engine efficiency of < 200 s.f.c. (cc/bhp/hr)


The vehicles are highly specialized and optimized for the event and are not intended for every day use. The designs represent what can be achieved with current technology and offer a glimpse into the future of car design based on minimal environmental impact in a world with reduced oil reserves. The work of the participants can be used to show ways manufacturers could redesign their products.

Teams who have participated in the competition include
  • DTU Roadrunners
    DTU Roadrunners
    DTU Roadrunners is a student driven project at the Technical University of Denmark competing in the Shell Eco-Marathon races. The team usually participates in the two classes of the European Shell Eco-Marathon: the Urban Concept class and the Prototype class with the cars Dynamo and Innovator...

     - Technical University of Denmark
    Technical University of Denmark
    The Technical University of Denmark , often simply referred to as DTU, is a university just north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and is today ranked among Europe's leading engineering institutions, and the...

     http://www.ecocar.dk
  • Purdue Solar Racing http://www.purduesolar.org/
  • Cal Poly Supermileage, from California Polytechnic State University
    California Polytechnic State University
    California Polytechnic State University, or Cal Poly, is a public university located in San Luis Obispo, California, United States. The university is one of two polytechnic campuses in the 23-member California State University system....

  • Cedarville University
  • Team H2politO
    Team H2politO
    H2PolitO – molecole da corsa is a Team of italian and foreign students from the Polytechnic of Turin. These students come from various degree courses and work together on the design and assembly of a low consumption hydrogen vehicle – IDRA.The Team mission is to participate in low consumption...

     - Molecole da Corsa http://www.polito.it/h2polito/
  • Team Green http://www.teamgreen.org.uk/
  • Microjoule
  • Eco-Runner Team Delft
    Eco-Runner Team Delft
    Eco-Runner Team Delft is the first team from the Netherlands to participate in the Shell Eco-marathon at the Rockingham Speedway in the UK in July 2006. After its first participation, three new Dutch teams arose in the next year, competing in the Nogaro Circuit Shell Eco-marathon in May 2007...

     http://www.ecorunner.nl
  • Trinity School Racing http://www.trinityschoolracing.co.uk
  • Aemval http://www.aemval.org/
  • Pac-car
    Pac-car
    Pac-Car II is the world's most fuel-economic vehicle. It was developed as a student project at ETH Zürich . Based on a group of students and an experienced teamleader, the goal was to build a vehicle that uses as little fuel as possible...

  • Sandbach School
    Sandbach School
    Founded in 1677, Sandbach School has been located on Crewe Road in Sandbach, Cheshire for almost 150 years.It is an all-boys school offering admission from the age of 11. In years 10 and 11 a range of GCSE's and Vocational subjects are offered. The school has its own Sixth Form and so offers...

     http://www.school-portal.co.uk/GroupDownloadFile.asp?GroupID=54319&ResourceId=827939
  • Team Schluckspecht http://www.schluckspecht.net/
  • Team TIM http://www.timupsinsa.com
  • Fortis Saxonia http://www.fortis-saxonia.de/home/?lang=en
  • Eco Motion Team by ESSTIN http://www.ecomotionteam.org
  • Remmi-Team, Tampere University of Technology , Finland http://remmi-team.com
  • Team Economus
  • University of Ottawa Supermileage
  • Team EcoCar by Louisiana Tech University http://www.latechecocar.com
  • The Politechnical University Of Valencia
  • The Leekburners, Lindenborg High School, Leek, Netherlands (http://www.leekburners.eu)
  • Team NTNU - DNV Fuel Fighter
    DNV Fuel Fighter
    The DNV Fuel Fighter is a hydrogen-driven car that was designed and built in Norway as a student project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology . It was built to compete in the Shell Eco Marathon...

    http://www.fuelfighter.no
  • Agilis Eco Car by Royal Institute of Technology
    Royal Institute of Technology
    The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...

     KTH http://www.md.kth.se/agilis
  • The Hydro Cruisers (The Hague University) http://www.eco-marathon.nl/
  • The Harwich School
  • Tigergen II
    Mizzou Hydrogen Car Team
    The Mizzou Hydrogen Car Team designs, builds and competes with a prototype hydrogen fuel cell vehicle run by students at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. They compete with their Award-Winning vehicle named "Tigergen II" in the Shell Eco-Marathon...

     by the University of Missouri
    University of Missouri
    The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...

     http://mizzouhydrogen.org/
  • The Green Machine by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
    Vrije Universiteit Brussel
    The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is a Flemish university located in Brussels, Belgium. It has two campuses referred to as Etterbeek and Jette.The university's name is sometimes abbreviated by "VUB" or translated to "Free University of Brussels"...

     and the Erasmushogeschool Brussel http://ecomarathon.vub.ac.be]
  • Pak Pacers - University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila, Pakistan
  • The Y-Nots! - Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan

External links

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