Last weekend, Green Team Twente, made up of eleven mechanical engineering students from the University of Twente, won the Shell Eco-marathon Europe held in Rotterdam. The team from the East Netherlands succeeded in building a car that can travel 727.5 kilometres on just one litre of petrol (452 miles per 0.22 gallons).
The race covered ten laps of 1.6 kilometres (approx. 1 mile). The goal in this category was not to drive as fast as possible but as energy-efficient as possible, which the mechanical engineering students from Green Team Twente accomplished in spectacular fashion. They raced with a self-built hydrogen-powered car in the Urban Concept category, where the competing vehicles have to resemble, to some extent, a traditional passenger car. The Green Team Twente car came first in the category after their car reached 75 km/kWh (46.7 miles/kWh), the equivalent of 727.5 kilometres per litre of petrol. The winning team took home a trophy and a cheque for 1500 euros.
Pjotr Kerssens, one of the team members, expressed their pride at winning such a prestigious event. “But it was a real surprise,” he was quick to add. Right up until the start of the race, the team had been hampered by technical problems. While transporting the vehicle, the rear suspension had broken. Once this had been repaired, problems occurred with the electronics. After a lot of hard work, the team managed to fix the problem just in time for the official vehicle inspection. Only to be thwarted again by a wrong windshield wiper and a problem with the electric motor, which both threatened to throw a spanner in the works. But the students were not to be defeated and eventually made it to the starting line in time with a fully-functioning vehicle.
Photo: Shell Eco-marathon
