Shell Eco-marathon is a world-wide energy efficiency competition sponsored by
Shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
** Thin-shell structure
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard o ...
. Participants build automotive vehicles to achieve the highest possible
fuel efficiency
Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the ratio of effort to result 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, wh ...
. There are two vehicle classes within Shell Eco-marathon: Prototype and UrbanConcept. There are three energy categories within Shell Eco-marathon: battery-electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and internal combustion engine (gasoline, ethanol, or diesel). Prizes are awarded separately for each vehicle class and energy category. The pinnacle of the competition is the Shell Eco-marathon Drivers' World Championship, where the most energy-efficient UrbanConcept vehicles compete in a race with a limited amount of energy.
Shell Eco-marathon competitions are held around the world with nine events as of 2018. The 2018 competition season includes events held in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
,
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
,
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
Istanbul
Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...
,
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...
,
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. Participants are students from various academic backgrounds including university teams such as past finalists
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...
,
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
,
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...
, and
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
.
In 2018, over 5,000 students from over 700 universities in 52 countries participated in Shell Eco-marathon. The digital reach of Shell Eco-marathon is approximately several million.
History
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. The winner managed a fuel economy of . A repeat of the challenge yielded dramatically improved results over the years:
* with a 1947 Studebaker in 1949
* with a 1959 Fiat 600 in 1968
* with a 1959 Opel in 1973.
The current record is , set in 2005 by the
PAC-Car II. The world record in Diesel efficiency was achieved by a team from the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia (Politechnical University of Valencia, Spain) in 2010 with 1396.8 kilometres per litre. In contrast, the most efficient production
Diesel
Diesel may refer to:
* Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression
* Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines
* Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...
passenger cars achieve , and some high-powered sports cars achieve as little as .
The current European Shell Eco-marathon 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. Prototype vehicles using fuel cells are capable of greater energy efficiency. In 2005, a 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 equivalent to the distance between Paris and Moscow. In 2013, ethanol efficiency world record was set by Toulouse Ingenerie Multidisciplinarie with 3100 km of a single litre of ethanol. This is equivalent to the distance between Toulouse and Istanbul.
Event
The Eco-Marathon has different classes of competition, according to the energy source used:
Fuel cell
A fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that converts the chemical energy of a fuel (often hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (often oxygen) into electricity through a pair of redox reactions. Fuel cells are different from most batteries in requ ...
s,
solar cell
A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. s,
gasoline
Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic co ...
, Diesel fuel and
LPG. 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 or closed-off city streets. The fuel is strictly measured out for each entrant at the start and end of the course. The difference is used to calculate the vehicle's average fuel consumption. Solar-powered vehicles are not eligible for the grand prize for fuel efficiency.
In 2017, more than 100 student teams from many countries across the Americas competed in the Shell-Eco Marathon Americas to a crowd of over 20,000 throughout the competitions at the
Cobo Center
Huntington Place (formerly known as Cobo Hall, Cobo Center, and briefly as TCF Center) is a convention center in Downtown Detroit, owned by the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority (DRCFA) and operated by ASM Global. Located at 1 Was ...
in
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
.
Entrants
The top performing vehicles are purpose designed for high efficiency. Some vehicles use a coast and 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 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
The drag coefficient is a common measure in automotive design as it pertains to aerodynamics. Drag is a force that acts parallel to and in the same direction as the airflow. The drag coefficient of an automobile measures the way the automobile p ...
(C
d) below 0.1
*
Rolling resistance
Rolling resistance, sometimes called rolling friction or rolling drag, is the force resisting the motion when a body (such as a ball, tire, or wheel) rolls on a surface. It is mainly caused by non-elastic effects; that is, not all the energy nee ...
coefficients less than 0.0015
* Weight without driver under 45 kg
* Engine efficiency under 200
specific fuel consumption (cc/bhp/hr)
The vehicles are highly specialized and optimized for the event and are not intended for everyday 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.
References
External links
{{commons category, Shell Eco-marathon
Official Shell Eco-Marathon websiteShell Eco-Marathon 2010 Rules
Green racing
Science competitions
Sustainable transport
1939 establishments in Illinois