MOTORS INNOVATION: SHELL ECO-MARATHON:At Germany's EuroSpeedway, students from universities worldwide compete to stay filled up, writes NICK HALL
IMAGINE GETTING from Dublin to Moscow without filling up with fuel. Ridiculous, isn’t it?
Well now imagine getting there without the gauge moving; imagine homing in on Moscow having supped less than a litre of petrol along the way. That’s what I’ve just seen at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz Ring just outside Dresden at the Shell Eco-marathon.
This is the 25th annual running of an event that started unofficially in 1939, when two particularly anal engineers argued over whose fuel was the most efficient. Shell has long championed the efficiency of its fuel and, for the past two-and-a-half decades, has invited students from around the world to an event that has grown in stature as the environment, emissions and simple expense of filling up a car have taken over from speed and safety as the primary concerns.
“Society needs a new generation of talented problem-solvers to address the world’s energy challenges,” says Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Shell.
The perverse logic of a company encouraging the general public to buy less of its product was explained at length by Shell’s marketing gurus.
Dwindling supplies and an expected surge in demand over the coming decades will see petrol supplies come under strain as early as 2013; on our current trajectory, we’ll need three times as much petrol in 2050 and that just isn’t feasible. So we need to be more efficient right now, and the environmental message is drilled home throughout the event.
But even without the sentiments, the Eco-marathon is a spectacular event in its own right, and some of the cars are as evolved as F1 machines in their own special way. The state-of-the-art Microjoule entry from Lycee la Joliverie in France, which has won the race since 1992, has constantly evolved with serious wind-tunnel time and even boasts carbon-fibre wheels – at about €1,000 a pop.
The 30kg car comes with a custom-built 30cc engine, smaller than that of a Vespa, then, and managed to consume just 5g of fuel on its way to another resounding win in the Internal Combustion Category with a best run of 3,771km/litre, which would have comfortably taken it to Moscow, and a good portion of the way back.
Sadly, there’s no room for air conditioning, stereo or other creature comforts in the vehicle; there’s barely room for the driver, who must lie down in this carbon-fibre coffin and watch the road ahead through a window between his feet.
I wasn’t the only one doing a swift double-take as a condom-shaped entry ambled past on its timed run, and everything from a miniature Renault Clio racer to a modified bicycle took to the track. Here – as in any other form of racing – money and sponsorship are essential for the win, but others can take part and show their skills.
And, while the prototypes were almost invariably thin slivers of machines that will never see action on the open road, the burgeoning UrbanConcept category provided more realistic machines with a chance to shine.
Indeed, Team Baldos from Sweden even put their car through many of the roadworthiness tests in their homeland – theirs is tomorrow’s city car in the making. It’s absolutely tiny – so small you could fit three in one lane of traffic – but then that’s the kind of solution that might actually work.
The brightest young minds gathered at the EuroSpeedway in East Germany to queue up for a litre of fuel that they would then use in the most efficient manner possible to cover eight laps of the race track. The remaining fuel was then used to calculate their efficiency, and the best entries came back with barely a thimbleful used after almost 30km of running.
It’s anything but fast, as entrants must complete the course at an average speed of 30km/h and going any faster will cost them precious drops of fuel. So the engines, ranging from modified moped powerplants to strimmer engines, right up to custom-built 30cc units with a single coated cylinder and aircraft inspired piston, are more often than not turned off, with the “cars” coasting eerily around the track before a short burst of power provides the momentum to keep going on the uphill stretches.
It’s almost surreal watching 11-year-old kids, the minimum age of an Eco-marathon runner, wondering round with fireproof overalls and crash helmets when they will be going slower than a bicycle. Even brakes were added this year, only as a novel technical regulation. But this is still motorsport – the cars are developed to within an inch of the regulations and, considering the materials on board, it’s an essential safety procedure.
Because, although many have a litre of fuel sloshing round in a glass container, others run on all kinds of bizarre materials – even recycled fatty acids, and there’s an alternative fuel category that is populated largely by Hydrogen fuel cell cars, constructed on a tight budget in a university lab.
Nobody dares mention the Hindenberg, but there’s a strict “no smoking” policy throughout the paddock as the brains of tomorrow grapple to get to grips with technology that still gives the leading manufacturers trouble. But the solutions are ingenious, and its no surprise that major marques had talent scouts on the ground to sign up tomorrows automotive engineers with a new eco-friendly outlook. From the car with the bodywork produced entirely from silk to the solar-powered machine that actually produces more energy than it consumes, it was all on display at the 25th running of the Shell Eco-marathon.
Driving to Moscow on a litre of fuel might sound ridiculous, but its just been done on a racetrack in the far flung regions of East Germany. And if this technology can cross to the mainstream then well soon have cars that not only get us to work on a thumble full of fuel, theyll have enough left to make the coffee when we get there.