The Shell Eco Marathon is a competition for high school and college teams with the objective of producing the most fuel efficient vehicle possible. I was a part of this project during my whole senior year of high school. My high school sponsored our club to produce a vehicle for this competition of which we were the only high school in California to compete.
We started with the car that had been used in the previous year's competition. We stripped the old car down to the frame, made some modifications to the frame, then moved forward from there. I primarily worked with the engine on our car and tuning it to optimize efficiency and reliability. I also helped with general assembly and maintenance of the car while at the competition.
We were one of four teams competing in our division of street legal vehicles using ethanol as fuel. This meant that our vehicle was required to have certain features such as a windshield wiper, headlights, and turn signals. This classification limited our ability to consider aerodynamics which was much more important in the super-mileage division.
In April of 2015 we traveled to Detroit for the competition. We were one of two teams out of the four in our division to pass technical inspection and be allowed to compete on race day. Ultimately we finished second to a much more experienced team, but were still able to take home a cash prize for our high school.
Through the process of designing and building a vehicle for competition I gained valuable experience in working with a small group within a larger team and making sure that there is clear communication between the different groups to achieve a common goal in the face of a hard deadline. The experience of working under time constraints and the pressure to perform at home and at the competition is something that I learned a lot from and will be able to use for a long time.
And yes. That is me in the dark gray shirt next to Jay Leno in the first picture talking about our car. He interviewed us for a special program that aired on NBC about the competition.
