With gas prices on the rise and fuel-efficiency a top priority, there’s one vehicle that remains supreme: the supermileage vehicle. MSOE’s SAE Supermileage team showcased their fuel-efficiency expertise at the SAE Supermileage Engineering Design Competition where they took fifth place with 623 miles per gallon.

The goal of the competition is to develop and construct a single-person, fuel-efficient vehicle that complies with the competition rules. The vehicles run a specified course to obtain the highest combined kilometers per liter (miles per gallon) rating. There also is a design segment that consists of a written design report and verbal presentation. The teams are then ranked based on the measured fuel economy of their vehicle, quality of the design report and presentation. MSOE’s team took fifth place overall out of a total of 13 teams from universities across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada.

According to the SAE Supermileage team’s Facebook page, their most successful run had a few hiccups along the way.

“For our first run, 623 miles per gallon, we had the hood of our car come off after starting the engine and beginning to drive,” the Facebook post said. “This resulted in a DNF [did not finish] on the board, but in reality, we kept driving after putting the hood back on and took a mileage hit. We completed the test and it ended up being our best score.”

They had engine troubles on their second run which may have been due to the electronic throttle getting stuck. Although there were challenges, the team said that’s what competition is all about. “The competition isn’t easy and the unexpected hardships along the way are what makes it difficult, but that is part of the challenge and a lot like reality in the engineering world,” the team said.

Dr. Prabhakar Venkateswaran, Mechanical Engineering Department, serves as the faculty advisor of the team and Matthew Schmidt ’22 is the project manager. The students who traveled to the competition at the Eaton Vehicle Group Proving Grounds in Marshall, Michigan include:

• Michael Anderson, mechanical engineering
• John Bilkey, electrical engineering
• Ryan Detlor, mechanical engineering
• Collin Fayas, mechanical engineering
• Sean Hardiman, mechanical engineering
• Jake Kraus, mechanical engineering
• Sidney Lencki, mechanical engineering