News

The Dalhousie Supermileage team had their best finish ever at the Shell Eco-marathon Americas competition this past weekend in Houston, achieving the highest mileage ever by a Dalhousie team. 

The Dalhousie Sexton Supermilers placed 9th in a field of 55 teams drawn from Brazil, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico and the US, and achieved a team best of 965 miles per gallon (mpg).  The Shell Eco-marathon Americas is a unique competition that challenges teams to go further rather than faster and strive for the highest fuel-efficiency.  Top teams will complete the 6-mile course on only a few mililiters of fuel.

After a strong showing last year as the only Canadian team to finish the course, and placing 12 overall, the team had set their sights on cracking the top ten.  The students made major improvements to the engine, power train and also redesigned the steering. 

Over three days of competition teams have several opportunities to perform, make adjustments and improve upon their results.

"Our last run should have pushed us over 1000 mpg, except our battery died on the last lap so that was quite frustrating." said Allison Chua Team Lead and driver.  "However, all in all, I am happy with our results.  It was an extremely challenging course to drive so it was great we were able to achieve such high mileage."

This year's Supermileage team consists of 13 students from across engineering who, with the support of the competition coordinator Piotr Kawalec, are responsible for all aspects of the project from design, to arranging sponsors, and a good part of the construction. 

"We learned a lot by watching other teams at the competition and we're going to try and implement some major improvements so we can get over 1000 mpg next year."  Says Ms. Chua.

The Dalhousie Faculty of Engineering has been sponsoring Supermileage competition teams since 1997.