The Shell Eco-Marathon is sort of a weird contradiction. On the one hand, it’s sponsored by Shell, but on the other hand, it’s all about challenging high school and college students to make hyper-fuel-efficient cars, i.e. kind of the opposite of Shell’s goals. It’s like if the Intel high school science competition were sponsored by Rick Santorum.
At any rate, though, the kids really came through this year. Here are four of the winning vehicles, all built by high schoolers, all of which got more than 1,000 miles to the gallon in their competition trials.
Mater Dei High School in Evansville, Ind., basically cleaned up the competition. Here’s their 9th Gen, a gas-powered vehicle that got 2,188.6 miles per gallon on its best run.
Mater Dei’s 8th Gen is electric and squeezed out the equivalent of 1,587 miles per gallon.
Gas-powered 6th Gen, also by Mater Dei, logged 1,441.5 miles per gallon.
Finally, Mater Dei let someone else win for a while: Wawasee High School of Syracuse, Ind., entered this diesel-powered vehicle called Diesel, which got 1,289.8 miles per gallon.
