Hanoi students build ultra-efficient car that travels 400km on 1 liter of gasoline
A super fuel-efficient car built by a team of students from Hanoi University of Science and Technology (Đại học Bách khoa Hà Nội), one of Vietnam's leading engineering schools, has been entered in a competition called Eco Driving - Fuel Saving.
Faced with the challenge "How many kilometers can you travel on 1 liter of gasoline?", the students applied two sets of solutions:
- Reducing the weight of the frame and the car's drag.
- For the engine, tuning several parameters to shorten the injection time in each cycle and raising the pressure so the fuel is atomized more finely.
Still from a video clip.
"The driver lies almost flat while driving to keep the car as low as possible during operation, so that air resistance is at its lowest," team member Nguyễn Trọng Long said in a video interview with a reporter.
Still from a video clip.
The team's car consists of four main parts: the body shell, the frame, the engine and the transmission.
The body shell is designed to optimize aerodynamics, reducing drag and friction.
All three wheels have a small diameter to reduce friction and load. The car has a top speed of 80km/h. It uses a four-stroke, 110cc engine, weighs about 40kg and can travel 400km on a liter of gasoline.
"Our body shell is made of composite material, which is light yet sturdy and withstands loads well. We also designed and calculated the frame to bear loads very well, so if a collision occurs, I believe the frame and shell will keep the driver safe," team leader Phạm Tuấn Anh said.
"At the moment, the most important feature we are aiming for is fuel economy, along with drivability and optimizing the engine's power output. Our current result is 400km per liter of gasoline, and the team is aiming higher, for milestones of 500km per liter and 700km per liter."
Associate Professor Đàm Hồng Phúc, a lecturer at Hanoi University of Science and Technology, said: "We focused all our technical means and engineering solutions on saving as much fuel as possible. Goals that meet everyday usage needs are not easy to achieve, so applying these products in practice still requires a further step."
"But what the students have achieved is understanding how to save fuel under the most specific conditions possible. As for future products brought to market, they will make products that better meet market demand."
In Vietnam, the record for fuel efficiency is currently held by a car named Supercub 50, built by students from the Faculty of Automotive Engineering at Hanoi University of Industry (Đại học Công nghiệp Hà Nội), which traveled nearly 1,000km on just 1 liter of gasoline.
Under the slogan "How many kilometers can you travel on 1 liter of gasoline?", the highest fuel-economy record to date is 3,644.86 km per liter, set in 2011 in Japan.
