‘Supermileage’ vehicle
A team of about 20 students at Brigham Young University now has the distinction of having designed and built the highest miles per gallon vehicle in the Western Hemisphere. (Shown in the video below.) The supermileage team, made up of mechanical engineering students, competed in the Shell Eco Marathon last month, taking first place at the competition. The team’s vehicle is rated at 2,145 mpg, roughly the distance from Provo to New York City. The average is calculated from a ten-mile run around the track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Josh Klingensmith, a sophomore, said to reach that high bar of efficiency, they started by omitting all unnecessary parts from the vehicle’s build. “We got rid of all the creature comforts. There’s no AC, you don’t have 12-inch sub(woofers) in the car,” Klingensmith explained. “Right now, I think it’s 108 pounds total.” The team achieved the lightweight with the help of a carbon fiber body, a slim, aerodynamic design, and very small components. The fuel tank consists of a 30-mililiter container, filled with ethanol. (About one tablespoon of rubbing alcohol.)
“Ethanol has less energy in it per gallon, but it can run to a higher compression ratio.” While the vehicle is designed to go far, it is not meant to go fast, topping at around 23 miles per hour, which Tree said is targeted for optimum fuel efficiency. “We’re trying to go far on a very small amount of fuel,” Tree said. “If you drove your car so that you never used the brake, so that you were just rolling to a stop at every stop sign, every stoplight, you would get a much higher miles per gallon out of your car.” That’s where the driver’s skill comes into play. They have to be able to fit into the very small driver compartment, with a maximum height of about 5’4″ weighing no more than around 120 pounds. While all of these measures combined, may seem excessive, the idea is that ultimately the same principles could help engineer the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles. The answer to the latter question is that the car isn’t safe enough to drive on normal roads and freeways. The driver of the vehicle must lay flat on their back and look over their toes to drive. He said it’s uncomfortable, and a truck would drive right over it because it’s so low to the ground.
Building the most eco-friendly vehicle in the U.S. wasn’t easy. Camille Nobrega, this year’s BYU supermileage club president, said there was a lot of trial and error. “Learning in a classroom is motivational for some people, but not for everybody, and it really helps them to get out and build something and get involved. And then when they go to these competitions, they find out they can do things that they didn’t think they could do or they have capabilities that they didn’t know they had,” Tree said. He had students tell him they didn’t think they could be engineers because they weren’t “A” students, but the supermileage club and Shell Eco-marathon gave them new perspective.
Saving gas money
If Wal-Mart is lowering prices every day,
why isn’t anything in the store free yet?
Gas prices are so high…
That even the coronavirus stopped traveling.
Gas prices are getting ridiculous
I went online to check the value of my car and it asked if the tank was empty or full.
Things are pretty bad right now.
Van Diesel was forced to change his name to Van Electric due to increasing oil prices.
May 19th Birthdays
1939 – Nancy Kwan, 1952 – Grace Jones, 1993 – Elinor Thomlinson, 1983 – Jessica Fox
1949 – Archie Manning, 1976 – Kevin Garnett, 1945 – Peter Townshend, 1986 – Eric Lloyd