paccar II. Heard of it? 12,600mpg...
 

I hadn't heard of it until today. Experimental, probably ridiculously expensive and impractical. But 12,600mpg (US)! And that's a REAL mpg number. Apprently I need a couple more posts to put in a link...

I wouldn't call it real numbers. It is extrapolated from a very small amount of fuel used in a closed course competition, with a purpose built car, at limited speeds.

That said supermileage competitions are freaking awesome.

Kirk

ETH - PAC-Car II - Welcome to the PAC-Car II website!

As real as the Shell EcoMarathon is removed from daily reality ;)

To give you an idea of its size :
http://www.paccar.ethz.ch/news/ladoux_team

The drivers ?
2 tiny female students ...

...and powered to far less than 50mph by two electric motors, fed by hydrogen fuel cell so it's MPGe.

Let's see it go over a speed bump.

So does Shell actually sponsor any 'real world' cars, or are they just trying to give people the idea that high MPG cars are completely impractical ?

I really liked the Energizer sponsored EV that they measured how far it could go on the energy in a pair of AA batteries...
The real world stuff that comes out of vehicles like this are battery management systems, motor controllers, motor designs, vehicle body design, the list just keeps going!

Also, at least for the Super Mileage competition that I used to enter in, the driver had to weigh at least 140 pounds, if they didn't the ballast weight was added, speed was capped at 30mph and yes, it was a closed course.

I too was a Super High Mileage contestant back in the day.

No, you can't take the competition cars and drive them on the streets and get that fe, and you can't directly lift the tech on to your street vehicles, but that doesn't nullify the contest. It's a great project engineering/coordination/planning/execution experience, and it's interesting, fun, and engaging besides.

Shell does have a "real street" category that still isn't real street... I don't quite understand that one yet... :confused: