1,336 MPG Hydrogen Vehicle Built By Students

The car might weigh less than some people at a meager 240 pounds, but it has a range of 1,336 miles on one tank of hydrogen fuel. The car, called SAHIMO, was developed by Turkish students at the Sakarya University Advanced Technologies Implementation Group (SAITEM). They're now working on a goal of raising their record from 568 kilometers on one liter of hydrogen to a full 1,000 kilometers. SAHIMO is predominantly made out of carbon fiber and cost the group $170k to make.

Although they've managed to squeeze an extraordinarily high number of miles out of a gall, it wasn't enough for taking first place at Shell. Instead, the SAHIMO won third place in Europe's 26th Shell Eco Marathon. According to Shell's website, the goal of the Eco-marathon is to "challenge students around the world to design, build, and test vehicles that travel further using less energy. It's an educational platform that encourages innovation, reinforces conservation and fosters the development of leading technology for greater energy efficiency." These types of competitions that engage students to engineer solutions to company challenges are becoming more popular.

Their next challenge is tackling the "Global Green Challenge," which is a "platform and testing ground for the next generation of vehicle technology. These competitions are similar to the concept of crowdsourcing because they put problems out in the open market for engineers, students, or general hobbiest to solve. Another interesting one is Local Motors, which we've written about several times. Their using the concept of crowdsourcing and competitions to design various parts of the car through submissions and community based voting.

Here is a video of how they built the car: