34cc Car aims for MPG record
Off to France with a 4 foot 11 woman
A three-wheeler created by one man working in his spare time will be the sole British contender for the title of world’s most fuel-economic car in a global competition later this month.
Andy Green will keep the spirit of the eccentric lone British inventor fighting against the world very much alive when his Team Green car competes in the Shell Eco-Marathon championships in France on May 15th and 16th.
Andy, an engineer at the University of Bath, has designed and built the car, which does over 6,000 miles to the gallon, to compete in annual competitions in Europe to find the world’s most fuel-economic car.
However, he will not be driving the car at the Nogaro Motor Circuit, near Mont-de-Marsan, south of Bordeaux in South West France. That task will be down to Frances Rogers, a 21-year-old student chosen for her light frame - she is just 4 foot 11 inches tall (1.49 metres).
Teams from 16 countries around the world will compete in France, some of them with as many as 30 engineers working on them, and large groups of supporters. Andy Green will have only his father-in-law, Frances and reserve driver Jenny Goodman for company.
The car features a single cylinder four-stroke engine with a capacity of just 34 cc, and runs with a special management system incorporating fuel injection.
Andy hopes this year to win the British record for the lowest fuel use, by overtaking the British record of 6,387 miles per gallon - Team Green’s best so far is 6,198 mpg.
Although two other British teams will feature at the competition in France, only Andy’s car, which he has been working on for five years, will take part in the main competition, which is regarded as the ‘world cup’ of fuel-economy car racing.
"It’s a labour of love ," said Andy. "It was very difficult to get funding to build the first fuel-efficient car when I started in 1996, but our success has meant that gradually we’ve been able to get limited sponsorship .
"The current model has taken me more hours than I care to admit in my spare time to put together, and I’ve been working on it in the evenings and frequently at the weekends to get it ready.
The car had to be driven between speeds of four miles per hour (seven kilometres an hour) and 30 miles per hour (50 kilometres an hour) for about 10 miles (16 kilometres).
"Usually we only burn the engine for a few seconds once each lap, and let the vehicle coast for the rest of the time ," said Frances, who is in her third year of a four-year MEng in Mechanical Engineering.
"The hardest part is to avoid colliding with other vehicles - because other teams want very light drivers, they often use children as young as 10 and they don’t always steer straight ."
Andy Green says he chose Frances because she was light, but also because his experience had told him that women drove more intelligently than men.
"The problem with men is that they usually want to do it their own way, rather than for the benefit of the team. It takes very subtle skills to coax the maximum distance for the minimum amount of fuel ."
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