The Shell Eco-marathon is an annual international competition spread across three continents, Americas, Asia and Europe respectively. The competition is organized by the oil company Shell, and has been held for more than 30 years. The initiative is supported by the EU commission for science and innovation, focus and sustainable development.
DTU Roadrunners competes in the European competition, in which almost 3000 students from technical high schools and universities across Europe compete to design, build and test the most energy efficient vehicle. The competing teams are divided into two main categories: Urban Concept for small city cars and Prototype for extremely optimized vehicles, and they are further more divided into categories depending on their car's source of energy.
Both categories have specific rule sets for the construction of the vehicles, and each competing car needs to comply with these rules before it is cleared to compete. The rule set for Prototype vehicles is fairly general, allowing the teams to design minimalistic and hyper optimized vehicles.
Urban Concepts vehicles are meant to mimic the small city cars of today, and are therefore subjected to a more strict set of rules than the Prototypes. For instance, an Urban Concept vehicle must be equipped with four wheels, a reasonably sized door, space for luggage and an upright driving position.
The fuel types available for the competition include normal gasoline and diesel as well as bio-ethanol, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), hydrogen and electricity. All fuels are provided by Shell according to the competition.
For more information, please visit the Shell Eco-marathon website.