Students Build Hydrogen Vehicle That Gets 1,336 MPG
Turkish students at Sakarya University have built a hydrogen car that gets 1,336 mpg. Well, sorta.
Called the SAHİMO, the vehicle’s current range is about 353 miles on a quarter gallon of fuel (568 kilometers on 1 liter). It travels such an obscene distance with so little fuel due to the vehicle’s uber-light weight: it weighs only 240 pounds (110 kilograms). The car’s made up of 90-percent carbon fiber.
I assume the size and weight limit it to holding only a liter of fuel. I couldn’t verify this as their site is in Turkish and mine is a little rusty.
The SAHMO won third most efficient vehicle in Europe’s 26th Shell Eco Marathon. And their next goal is to conquer the inaugural 2009 Global Green Challengee–an evolution of the World Solar Challenge competition in Australia–this October. About twenty electric, hybrid, alternative fuel and low emission production and prototype vehicles will compete in the race.
Melemez, a fourth-year student in the engineering department at Sakarya University, says “We are hoping to raise our record from 568 kilometers on one liter of hydrogen up to a full 1,000 kilometers on one liter, and we believe we can do it.”
A 3,000 kilometer trek across the Australian Outback on just 3 liters is quite ambitious but I really hope they can pull it off.
But before you think about running out and buying one, the car did cost $170,000 to build.
The 40-member group that developed the SAHIMO hydrogen car is the Sakarya University Advanced Technologies Implementation Group (SAITEM). Today’s Zaman reports that the team hopes to work on a non-piloted aircraft next and is already trying to get support from Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI).
Source: Inhabitat
Btw, if you’re interested in joining the first mailing list dedicated to bulk purchasing electric cars, check it out (you can also get cheap solar there too).
And in a collision with one semi, it will go completely invisible.
Uhmmm..before anyone gets too excited about it. The tech has ALWAYS been there. The problem is doing it so that people can afford it.
The car industry isn’t going to make these things if people cant buy them (duh).
Plus how safe is ANY car that weighs in at just over 200 lbs?
I heard that early on in history that there was a prototype of using hydrogen for cars but the government voted it out because they couldn’t make money. I don’t know for fact if it is true but it sounds like it!
You guys should also look up the EV1 car. It was scraped with no explanation.
fiberglass [fibra de vidrio], is dangerous is traveling at very high speeds and there is a collision…But what if teenagers had their own highway/highways and the maximun speed the car went was 50 miles per hour…Then there will not be no crash…Specially teenagers in the country side of each country where there is no road…And suppose the car cost less, like 4,000 or 3,000 dollars….I am glad for this because it will put teenagers to have jobs….Is better than traveling on bycicle…Very good idea…congratulations to them on a job well done…
yes this is amazing but it cannot go on the road do to its lite weight. 240 pounds? a car going 60 mph hitting that car, you would be seriously injuerd or dead… it is a great car but major flaws
There’s nothing new or highly advanced about this vehicle. Manufacturers, military, and private industries have been using carbonfiber for well over 20 years. You can get a full carbonfiber body for any current vehicle as long as you have enough money for it. The only bad thing about this vehicle is it’s size. It looks like a one seater and would probably be invisible to a person in a truck/suv. I wouldn’t want to be in it if it got hit.
There are plenty of US college students trying to develop this same level of technology. If you are interested, especially in contributing financially, contact Dr. Cliff Ricketts from Middle Tennessee State University. He is a very interesting man and has been working with biofuels, ethanol, and hydrogen/electric hybrids for more than 25 years!
They have been driving cars and busses on Hydrogen fuel cells in Western Canada for over a decade, and the technology is good.
Hopefully they will start to use this technology before we cannot afford, or be permitted, to buy oil from people who would destroy us.
Hate to be the cynic but. . .
Does anybody know the blast radius of Hydrogen?
A car composed of mainly of carbon fiber, ya I feel safe driving down the road when there were 6,420,000 car accidents in 2005.
Oh and the consideration of that global warming is a hoax ever hear of Milankovitch cycles or sunspots or a great variation of things that can cause climate variation not CHANGE!
O yeah, Oil supplies the world of other things beside fuel so eagerness to dissipate it is misguided.