Challenge vehicle could travel 3,300 miles on gallon of fuel
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The University of Michigan’s Supermileage Team is designing a vehicle that can travel 3,300 miles with a gallon of fuel.
The new student team will compete in its first competition this summer, the SAE International Supermileage Challenge, in Marshall, Michigan. The competition challenges student teams to design and construct a single-person, fuel-efficient vehicle with a small four-stroke engine.
The team’s goal this year is to beat the North American record of 3,169 miles per gallon.
The University of Michigan Supermileage team is a new engineering student project team within the College of Engineering. The team designs, builds, and races a custom ultra-efficient vehicle in the SAE Supermileage Competition - a competition that challenges teams to increase the fuel-efficiency of the internal combustion engine.
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Readers' comments (15)
Dinos Kynigos | 3 May 2012 12:56 pm
Very good job & Good Luck. I am sure that you can do it.
After you win please make it, safe, street legal, reliable, mass produced, affortable and available in the market.
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Paul Reeves | 3 May 2012 1:03 pm
Sorry to be such a sourpuss- but this competition seems in one major sense pointless as the entrants have to use the same basic engine (a Briggs & Stratton) - although modifications are allowed. Without being able to alter the propulsion type why bother.
Also I'd set a minimum speed of 60mph (after say 50s) as that really would add a useful and realistic 'constraint' to the competition.
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Stephen Dickinson | 3 May 2012 1:09 pm
Absolutly superb - this project has numerous positives. It has loads educational benefiits while also being highly inspiring in a direction which is beneficial to mankind. Good luck.
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ken wilks | 3 May 2012 1:17 pm
i thought that the record stood way above this, so they should be trying harder! Most records have used highly modified Honda 50cc engines which are somewhat more developed than B&S engines.
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20 Cent | 3 May 2012 2:24 pm
I like extreme machines. Of which this is one alongside other record breaking machines.
However like all extreme machines it is of no practical value.
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David | 3 May 2012 2:34 pm
The objects of such projects are research and education and not to make a production machine.
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Paul Reeves | 3 May 2012 5:54 pm
If the aims of projects such as these are research and education - then telling youngsters that Engineering is all about 'squeezing more out of less' is rather dispiriting. 'Gosh if we could only use balsa wood or carbon composites for those canal boats we could use 1 fewer ponies on the tow path'
More inspiring would be 'faster, higher, bolder'....(which btw are ultimately more beneficial for mankind and likely to generate totally new kinds of propulsion (some of which may not even emit carbon) on the way).
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David Coons | 4 May 2012 1:46 am
Hello all! I'm on the team right now and I just want to say thank you for the mention! If you have any questions, you can find us on facebook and ask questions there.
To reply to a couple comments already:
@paul reeves: an even baseline start is necessary to be able to accurately compare teams. It makes it easier to quantify how much better each is. As a result of our work on the one cylinder engine, we have a team member working on a device that will make direct fuel injection on small displacement engines (mopeds, motorcycles) up to 70% cheaper. This will help lower emissions in places such as India where those engines are extremely popular.
And as much as we would love to run the competition at realistic highway speeds, the time and money to correctly build these cars safely would be beyond the reach of many teams.
@ken wilks: hmm, well at least for an internal combustion engine running only off iso-octane fuel, the record was set a few years ago at the SAE Supermileage competition. Either way, 3,300+MPG should be an ok starting point :)
@20 cent: none of us on the team think that road cars will get 3,300 MPG any time soon! The extreme measures we have to go to makes most innovations impractical or unsafe. HOWEVER you can look at my reply to paul reeves to see what differences we can make.
Thank you all for your support! We hope the next time you see us in the news, we won the competition!
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Chris P | 4 May 2012 2:25 am
A human powered streamlined bicycle can go over 80 mph so the maximum speed is not so relevant. Getting to 12,000 mpg,the current record, requires a lot more knowledge than most universities have. The B&S engine levels the competition.
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David Martin | 4 May 2012 12:13 pm
If I recall correctly, these extreme mpg machines start and stop the petrol engine a number of times during a run, and there has been some comment about the energy used to restart the engine actually contributing to the vehicle's motion, thus making them behave as a plug-in hybrid.
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