Sydney to Melbourne on a litre?

Everyone gets a gong for something in the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas fuel-efficiency race, but the big winner was the Canadian team who made 2487 mpg -- that's 1057 km a litre.

The online facility your correspondent normally uses to convert miles per gallon to litres per 100 kilometres refuses to acknowledge "2487.5" in the MPG field. "Invalid data", it claims. But the Alerion Supermileage team from Quebec's Laval University has made it valid, achieving just that ridiculous figure in the 2010 Shell Eco-Marathon Americas, held earlier this month at the Discovery Green track in downtown Houston, Texas.

Tricking the converter by calling the figure "24.875", then moving the decimal point a couple of spots to the left and adding the appropriate zeros, it amounts to... 0.095L/100km. Or 1057.5 km per litre.

That's right: Laval's NTF 4.0 vehicle extracted 100 kays from just 95 millilitres of petrol. Let's get a visual on that: it's two thirds of a pony glass. Less than half of one of those little boxes of juice or UHT milk. The tiny little ones. Perhaps not surprisingly, technical information on the powertrain is thin on the ground.

This year saw 42 teams from 37 schools and universities fielding 47 vehicles in competition across such diverse criteria real-world applicability, technical prowess and safety as well as eco-friendliness.

The field drew power from petrol and diesel engines, fuel cells and solar radiation. The aim: to stretch as little energy as possible over as long a distance as possible.

The feat won the Laval team the grand prize of US $5000 in the Prototype category, which focuses on aerodynamics and lightness. When they got home, their parents could not hide their disappointment. Because in last year's Eco-Marathon they achieved 2757.1 mpg. In our talk, that's 0.085L/100km.

The Eco-Marathon is one of those goodwill events with a multi-levelled winners' dais, where 'most everyone comes away with a trophy.  Prototype runner-up gongs went to New York's Cicero North Syracuse High School team for its 780.9 mpg (331.99 km/l) hydrogen fuel-cell powered Clean Green Machine vehicle and Purdue University Solar Racing Team for its solar vehicle, Pulsar (no, not a converted Nissan), which achieved 4548 mpg (1933.5 km/l). It was not explained how a solar powered vehicle measures its fuel in gallons or litres.

The US $5000 grand prize in the UrbanConcept category, focused more on practical applicability than outright line honours, went to Mater Dei High School's Supermileage Team, whose vehicle, known as George, achieved 437.2 mpg (185.87 km per litre)

Then came a raft of Special Awards. People's Choice Award went to Purdue University's Pulsar vehicle (1st with 97,076 votes), Granite Falls High School took out second and third respectively for its Iron Maiden and Phillipe's Bulldozer entries.

Eco-Design Award went to the University of California, Los Angeles team for old car parts recycled and 'repurposed' in its Frankenstein vehicle.

Three teams took out Safety Awards for the priority they gave safety in vehicle design and construction, while Purdue University took the Technical Innovation Award its patent pending carbon fibre construction technique and  Louisiana Tech University received the Design Award for its originality, design integrity and achievements in ergonomics, aesthetics, choice of materials and technical feasibility.

Countless other awards were doled out for Communications (Purdue), Best Team Spirit (Louisiana Tech) and Perseverance in the Face of Adversity (University of Missouri).

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