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OTTAWA, June 28, 2010  —  Bolstered by an impressive finish at the SAE Supermileage Competition, a small student club from the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Engineering will soon try to break the North-American fuel-efficiency record for gasoline-powered vehicles.

Every year, the Supermileage team travels to Marshall, Michigan for the SAE Supermileage Competition, an international challenge where teams attempt to drive a track in a gasoline-powered race vehicle using as little fuel as possible. The goal of the event is to showcase the engineering, manufacturing and management skills of the students. The vehicles also demonstrate the fuel-efficiency potential of today’s technology and serve as test beds for emerging technologies.

In this year’s competition, the University of Ottawa team found itself matched against universities across North America. While most of the competitors had designed and built their vehicles over many years of for-credit senior design projects, the uOttawa vehicle was crafted and assembled in 18 months outside the classroom. Moreover, while other universities rely on used or modified off-the-shelf engines to power their vehicles, uOttawa’s Supermileage team custom-built its own; the 38cc engine has a high compression ratio of 16.5:1 and uses electronic fuel injection to increase fuel efficiency.

At the close of the competition, the larger teams were stunned to learn that out of 20 university contingents, the small uOttawa Supermileage team had placed a surprising second, with an impressive fuel-efficiency rate of 1,496 miles per gallon. This means the team could drive its vehicle from Ottawa to Winnipeg on a single gallon of gas.

Despite its success, the uOttawa Supermileage team is working hard on improving its design. By fine-tuning the engine and upgrading the fuel line, for instance, it hopes to drastically improve its fuel efficiency. Once the improvements have been made, the team will take its design to a local race track for a crack at the North-American record for fuel efficiency.

The uOttawa Supermileage team was founded in 2008 by undergraduate student Lihang Nong to give students the opportunity to improve their classroom knowledge and their teamwork skills through hands-on experience.