Last night on CNN Headline News, where they run the little state-by-state headlines across the bottom of the screen, there was one that went something like this:
MINNESOTA: Rossaue (sp?) high school students invent a car that gets 649 m/gallon.
I watched it go by two or three times, just to make sure I didn’t misread it; but can’t find anything about it on the web now (I’ll still be searching after this.)
This seems wierd to me. If true, wouldn’t this be fantastic news? Have our high schools gotten that advanced since I graduated? What’s the straight dope?
They ain’t taking it to the Indy 500 any time soon. They use a 3.5 hp Briggs & Stratton Engine. See the Grand Forks Herald atricle from last year’s competition.
The spelling of the city’s name is “Roseau,” BTW. Here is the article on this year’s event.
It’s not such a big deal really - people have been doing a lot better with these sorts of small, extremely lightweight cars for years.
Please note that this has no relation whatsoever to the claim that the “big oil companies” are supressing a “100 (or 200) mpg carburettor” that the average shmoe can just slap on their Buick Behemoth or Pontiac Leviathan.
Its pretty misleading to call these things cars, even go-cart is pushing it.
Like Astroglide, I saw this on the Headline News ticker and figured it HAD to be a misprint. So if these things are barely go-carts in their construction, what the hell are they? Neither of the previous links had pictures in the article.
And of course my obvious question is…o.k. fine, these ‘cars’ are probably made of paper mache and cardboard to save on weight, but could this engine be scaled up to a normal size/ normal weight car to give me…say 80 mpg?
You can find some pictures here.
Supermileage® Photo Album
From a site that sells a book on super mileage carburetors:
THE SUPER MILEAGE CARBURETOR
Seems doubtful to me, but I’m by far not a car expert.
Yarster – There’s been work done on making regular types of cars more fuel-efficient, in competitions similar to this one. I wouldn’t really call it “scaling”, as most of them work with actual car bodies and improve on that.
The small vehicles that get hundreds of miles to the gallon usually do so at low cruising speeds (not highway type) and aren’t quite practical machines since they don’t carry much weight. Numbers in the hundreds have been achieved before (IIRC, college competitions had 800+ a few years back, but I don’t know the record.
As far as the modern-vehicle competitions, go, 80 mpg is a goal hoped for but not easily reached. The Futurecar HEV (hybrid-electric vehicle) competition involves university teams and real car bodies. Last year’s design was based on a 1994 Mercury Sable and the best mileage was 62 mpg. All the teams start with the same car, then rip out the guts and put new, lightweight and better stuff in. The team from UC Davis (which usually places in the top few spots) used a Subaru IC engine about 700cc, a big electric motor, and a lot of aluminum or lightweight alloy parts.
By the way, this year’s competition car model is – the Chevy Suburban. Now there’s a good challenge.
panama jack
we’re on the road to nowhere - come on along.
Honda’s Insight gets 70MPG from a gas-electric hybrid engine. www.honda.com. One of the cars in MN competition got over 1000MPG on one run.