BYU students built a vehicle that can go 2,145 miles on a gallon of fuel

BYU students built a “supermileage” vehicle that can log enough miles on one gallon of fuel to get from Salt Lake City to New York.

Their months of hard work culminated at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway where they won the Shell Eco-marathon challenge last month for the third time in four years. Based on calculations done during the competition, the aerodynamic vehicle could cover an astounding 2,145 miles on that single gallon.

BYU beat the second place team by 122 mpg and the third place team by almost 900 mpg.

How did they do it?

So, what did BYU’s supermileage club do to set itself so far ahead of the competition? And with today’s gas prices, why aren’t we producing cars like this for everyone?

The answer to the latter question is that the car isn’t safe enough to drive on normal roads and freeways.

Dale Tree, a BYU mechanical engineering professor and one of the club’s faculty mentors, told abc4.com that the driver of the vehicle must lay flat on their back and look over their toes to drive. He said it’s uncomfortable, and a truck would drive right over it because it’s so low to the ground.

Camille Nobrega, this year’s BYU supermileage club president, said the weight of the vehicle is one reason it’s so efficient. The team limited the amount of things it added to the car to make it as light as possible.

“(The engine) has one piston, whereas a normal car would have like four,” she said. The vehicle also doesn’t have a gas pump. It relies on pressure to get the fuel from the gas tank to the engine. The team also made the body of the car out of lightweight carbon fiber.

Another efficient characteristic of the engine is the type of fuel it uses. Nobrega said students converted the vehicle’s gasoline engine to an ethanol engine, which uses fuel generally made from corn.

The road to the finish line

Building the most eco-friendly vehicle in the U.S. wasn’t easy. Nobrega said there was a lot of trial and error.

One time, when team members were working on another vehicle that runs on a battery, she said they had to re-weld the aluminum frame to make it fit their design needs. After making the adjustments, they realized it wasn’t in compliance with the Shell Eco-marathon rules.

“We had to cut the frame again and re-weld it to make sure that it was long enough to comply with the rules,” she said. “That was kind of frustrating, but more of a laughing moment because we couldn’t believe we had to do that twice. I think all of the difficulties that we had, we end up laughing about it in the end, because what else are you gonna do?”

BYU supermileage club and the Shell Eco-marathon are about giving young engineering students chances to make mistakes and try again, confidence in their skills and opportunities to apply classroom knowledge in real life. Tree said the competition can even be life-changing for some students.

“Learning in a classroom is motivational for some people, but not for everybody, and it really helps them to get out and build something and get involved. And then when they go to these competitions, they find out they can do things that they didn’t think they could do or they have capabilities that they didn’t know they had,” Tree said. He had students tell him they didn’t think they could be engineers because they weren’t “A” students, but the supermileage club and Shell Eco-marathon gave them new perspective.

The competition

Thousands of students across the world prepare for the Shell Eco-marathon each year. As one of the leading competitions for engineering students, it’s a pretty big deal. Students are tasked with creating a vehicle that is both energy efficient and technically sound.

Before getting a chance to win the race on the track, teams’ vehicles must pass 10 technical inspections. According to the Shell Eco-marathon website, “For some, the only goal is getting through this test.”

After passing the tests, vehicles must complete four laps on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track, which is 2 1/2 miles long, in 35 minutes. Tree said the goal is to go as slow as possible, but still finish in time. The rules require vehicles go at least 17 miles per hour.

For Tree, watching the competition is nerve-racking. “As they’re approaching that finish line, and they’ve got 20 seconds to go ... 19 ... 18... and you’re hoping they cross the line, because if they’re a minute — a second — over, then they’re disqualified,” he said. “It’s quite an experience.”

Tree has also seen students at the Shell Eco-marathon let sportsmanship take the driver’s seat in an environment that usually fosters cutthroat competition. The teams all band together to help each other out during the race.

“After they’ve worked six, eight months on a project, you hate to see a team not be able to do something because they don’t have a wrench or a part,” Tree said.

One year that BYU won the competition, their tire blew out in the first lap around the track. Tree said the team forgot to bring the spare.

Instead of using BYU’s misstep as an opportunity to pull ahead, another team gave them a tire. “Because of that, we won. You don’t see that in sports or other competitions a lot of the times,” he said.

Hard work pays off

BYU won the Shell Eco-marathon in 2024 and 2023, but Nobrega said that last year, because of bad weather and the limited amount of time for them to compete at the competition, BYU’s team didn’t get a valid attempt.

“I think that fueled us for this year,’ she said adding that seeing the car get off the starting line and finish a complete attempt within the 35 minutes was a win in itself.

As the live results came in, Nobrega was both shocked and excited. The calculations from the scientists at the competition showed that BYU’s internal combustion engine vehicle could go 2,145 miles on one gallon of fuel, winning first place. She was expecting to do well, but not as well as they did.

“Each little things counts,” she said. “All of the work that was put into both cars, and then the projects that we submitted, all of that contributed to our success.”

BYU was also announced as the team that had the most points across the entire competition, which earned them an invite to the Qatar global championship in 2027.

A small miracle

More than just winning, Nobrega said being able to go to the award ceremony at all was amazing.

“In previous years, the fifth and last day of the competition always fell on Sunday, but BYU doesn’t compete on Sundays,” she said. This year, the last day fell on a Saturday. “We were able to attend the award ceremony, and it was the first time I was able to hear the organizers of the Shell Eco-marathon announce that the BYU supermileage team won our category in first place. That was so exciting and honestly kind of an emotional moment for me.”

Since winning the competition, Nobrega graduated from BYU and started a job as a process engineer at an oil and gas refinery.

“I know for sure that BYU supermileage and the experiences that I’ve had prepared me for this job,” she said. “BYU supermileage was a big contribution to who I am today, and the future dreams that I want to fulfill.”