European Shell Eco Marathon Europe 2009: more than 8000 mpg!

The 25th edition of the Shell Eco Marathon took place last week at the German circuit of Lausitz, and quite a number of records were broken. A French team from the Lycée Saint Joseph la Joliverie in Nantes has improved upon its own record with its MicroJoule prototype, which managed to run 3771 kilometers on a single liter of gasoline. That's well over 8000 miles per gallon!

A solar-powered car, also from a French team, traveled 665 kilometers using a single kWh of electric power. In the Urban Concept category, which more closely resemble actual cars, a Norwegian university team using a hydrogen fuel cell managed to travel 1246 kilometers using just 1 kilogram of Hydrogen. The same team also took home the award to the least CO₂ produced: 2.6 g/km. The top gasoline-powered car in the Urban Concept category was entered by a Danish college team and went 589 kilometers using a single liter of gasoline (1356 mpg US). Click here to see the full list of results. Awfully impressive stuff!

[Source: Shell]