George Leone, Student Project Facilitator at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA, sent us pictures of a fascinating project one of the student teams is undertaking. Cal Poly students are designing a “Supermileage” car to compete in the Shell Eco-Marathon as part of a class project. The Shell Eco Marathon is designed to challenge high school and college student teams worldwide to design, build and test energy efficient vehicles. The winners are the teams that go the furthest distance using the least amount of energy.

Precision Board Plus PBLT-6 was cut on a CNC router and coated with Duratec to make carbon fiber molds for the body. They then added a 50cc engine for utilizing a tactic known as “burn and coast”, where they let the engine run for a short time and then coast, allowing them to achieve much higher miles per gallon. The MPG goal for this car, named “Lamina”, is 3000 Miles Per Gallon!

Lamina is not completely finished (they are working out final details on forming the windshield), but we have some great pictures of their progress. Additional pictures, including a video of Lamina’s maiden test voyage can be seen here. Stay tuned for a future update with finished pictures!