Shell Attempts to Redeem Themselves
by Shervin Saedinia
For the past 26 years, Shell has organized the Shell Eco-Marathon, a contest where students compete to see who can build a vehicle with the highest miles per gallon. I think it’s a great idea (except that none of the vehicles have been mass manufactured in the U.S.). You’d think that 26 years of research and development would give us an extremely fuel-efficient car…. and no, it hasn’t. Well the problem isn’t the competition, because just recently:
“a bunch of mechanical engineering students at California Polytechnic State University have created a three-wheeled car called the “Black Widow” that boasts an extraordinary mileage of 2752.3 MPG, and that too without using batteries . Developed for the upcoming Shell Eco-Marathon student competition, the wonder car generates power from a customized 3 horsepower Honda 50cc four-stroke engine to reach a top speed of 30 MPH. in addition, the super-efficient vehicle has a drag coefficient of 0.12 and weighs just 96 pounds.”
First of all, this is awesome! But wait a second, there are a couple things that need to be taken into account. For one, the Black Widow only goes up to 30 MPH, which means that it uses less gas than your typical vehicle anyway, which also means that you are going get to nailed on the freeway. Also, look at the darn thing, it only weighs 96 lbs and looks like a Luge. Of course it only uses a tiny bit of gas. I mean really, does this look familiar? Power Wheels anyone?
But this technology would be perfect if it were applied to vehicles like scooters, Smart Cars, motorcycles, Ride Share program cars, golf carts, or whatever else is small. Just think of how far 5 gallons could take you? This means driving back and forth from Los Angeles to New York twice!
At 30 mph, but still.
Last but not least, this means that gas is still being used, regardless of the mileage. Sure the Black Widow’s fuel-efficient, but this still means that fuel is being used! We are still using an outdated solution for powering our transportation when we need to really move away from gas altogether. What if all the ideas going into this competition went into another competition for electric vehicle batteries instead? Don’t you think that this would be a better use of brain power? I think YES.
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