The Most Fuel Efficient Car In The World
The Pac-Car holds the Guinness World Record as the most fuel efficient car. Built by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to demonstrate how economical a car can be, it traveled 5385 km for the equivalent energy of only 1 litre of gasoline. This corresponds to 0.0186 litres/100km, or 12,646 miles per gallon! This means the Pac-Car would only use 8 litres of fuel to drive around the globe.
The record was set on June 26, 2005, at the Shell Eco-Marathon in Ladoux,
France. The economical little Pac-Car, traveled 20.6 km and consumed approximately 1 g of Hydrogen
driving at an average speed of 30 km/h (roughly 18.6 mph). The Pac-Car was
powered by two 18V 150W electric motors and a fuel cell converted hydrogen
into electricity for the motors. As well as incredible fuel efficiency the
car had zero emissions, with pure water the only by-product.
Weight and aerodynamics were also important in contributing to the success of the worlds most
fuel efficient car. The Pac-Car was constructed from carbon fibre and weighed only 30kg. It
was also highly aerodynamic with a drag coefficient of just 0.075. By comparison
the Ford Escape has a Cd of 0.4 and a Toyota Prius 0.29.
Fuel cells could be a power source of the future for cars. Currently they are too expensive, prone to breaking and have too short a lifespan to be a practical alternative to internal combustion engines. But watch this space because heavy research and development is underway in this area.