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Imagine driving almost 900 kilometres on one litre of gas.

A U of T Engineering student team is hoping to do just that at the annual Shell Eco-Marathon Challenge in Houston, Texas in early April.

The aptly named University of Toronto Supermileage Team will be racing its 90-pound, 1.3 horsepower vehicle—powered by a Honda leafblower motor – against teams representing other universities from Brazil, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico and the United States.

The annual event challenges students to compete with other schools in their energy-efficient vehicles to see who can travel the farthest distance using the least amount of energy.

The teams will be competing for a variety of prizes in categories such as eco-design, safety, technical innovation, team spirit and perseverance in the face of adversity. U of T’s car, called Journey 1, will be driven by Biomedical Engineering student Monika Torio.

“I’m really pumped up about driving the car,” Torio said as the team demonstrated the car at U of T’s Institute for Aerospace Studies in North York.

“At first I was very nervous about getting into something we hadn't done before but getting to know these people and how committed they were to the team, I knew I really wanted to help build and drive this car.”

This photo shows supermileage team members (from left): Tabish Gilani, Monika Torio (driver), Jonathan Hamway (co-president), Michael Stranges and Kunal Taneja.

Absent from the photo are Mayukh Chakraborty, Andy Chen, Amanda Chou, Jacob Shultis and Mengqui Wang (co-president).

Hamway said the team has been working on the car for about 18 months

“It’s been mostly design work because this is the first time we’ve ever done this so we had to start from scratch.”

He said working on the car has given the team members practical experience to go along with the theory they learn in their coursework. “That practical component is an essential part of an engineering education.”

He said working on the car has been difficult because many of the eight team members – including both Torio and himself – are in their Professional Experience Year, working at full-time jobs right now.

“We can usually get together only on weekends. It’s hard to get everybody here at the same time.”

But he’s confident they’ll do well in Houston.

“This is a better car than any team has ever built at U of T, because we have the best people working on the car.”

Professor David Sinton of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and director of the Institute for Sustainable Technology, echoes that confidence.

“The University of Toronto Supermileage Team is a group of bright, hard-working students who are passionate about energy efficiency in transportation,” he said. “Their work in preparation for the competition has been a ‘supermileage’ effort in itself, requiring high output in the context of resource constraints. Time is tight but they are pulling the elements together.”

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