Photo: Ed Robinson/AP Images for Shell

DTU Roadrunners defends first place at Shell ECO-marathon

Construction and mechanics
Once again, a DTU student won the international student competition for fuel efficiency.

This year’s Shell ECO-marathon saw a new victory for the DTU ‘Dynamo’ car. In the period 2-5 July, the car managed to drive 429 km on a single litre of fuel—90 km more than the car in second place and 50 km more than DTU last year’s record.

The Dynamo car, which runs on bioethanol, was entered in the category ICE (internal combustion engine) Urban Concept, where teams compete to drive as far as possible on a single litre of fuel in urban-like conditions with numerous stops. The win also meant that the DTU team qualified for the competition Drivers World Championships which was held on the last day of the event. Here the team secured third place.

The victory in London was in no small part due to a massive effort to optimize the car. For example, two students created a brand new engine management program so that the car always uses the optimum amount of fuel.

“Last year we had some problems with our ECU, which controls all the electronics. It kept on cutting out and had to be reset. But this year it worked perfectly, and the engine ran much better than before,” says this year’s team manager, Christoffer Bohn Ebert.

Other students worked on minimizing brake friction and building a new steering wheel. A total of more than 30 students have been involved in making car improvements—partly on the eco car course DTU Roadrunners—and partly on various special courses.

But it does not stop there—there is still room for further improvement. Next year, the team will focus on reducing the weight of the car from 128 kg to 100 kg or less.

This will also be the subject of Christoffer’s bachelor's project on the Mechanical Engineering degree programme—a project he is doing together with the Dynamo driver, Sarah Conradsen.