How the Shell Eco Marathon Works

The European edition of the Shell Eco Marathon is coming in May (22-24):

Shell Eco Marathon

From the site:

The Shell Eco-marathon began in 1939 at a Shell research laboratory in the U.S. as a friendly wager between scientists to see who could get the most miles per gallon from their vehicles. From these humble origins, the organized competition for fuel economy evolved and moved to Europe. The Shell Eco-marathon in its current form began in 1985 in France, attracting thousands of young engineers and scientists from 20 European countries. The Shell Eco-marathon Americas was first held at the California Speedway in 2007.

The principle of the Shell Eco-marathon is simple: to design and build a vehicle that uses the least amount of fuel to travel the farthest distance. At all events, teams can enter futuristic prototypes: streamlined vehicles where the only design consideration is reducing drag and maximizing efficiency. In Europe, there is also the category of more realistic “UrbanConcept” vehicles, designed to meet the needs of today’s drivers. Conventional fuels such as diesel, petrol/gasoline and liquid petroleum gas, as well as alternatives like GTL, solar, ethanol, hydrogen and biofuels can power the vehicles. As long as teams adhere to safety rules, the design of their vehicles is limited only by their imagination.

One of the cars that has done extremely well over the years is the MicroJoule. It gets thousands of miles per gallon:

French concept car gets 8,923 miles per gallon

Here is an overview: