Cruising 1,500.7 miles on a gallon of gas, the Cal Poly Supermileage Team drove to a fourth-place finish out of 114 teams competing at the 2017 Shell Eco-Marathon on April 27-29 in Detroit, Mich.

“Despite encountering a few setbacks at the competition and accidentally rolling the car twice, the team scored fourth overall in the newly combined Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) category, which now contains gasoline, diesel, ethanol and compressed natural gas prototype vehicles,” said Cal Poly Supermileage Team President Lucas Rybarczyk. “We had a 300 miles-per-gallon improvement from the 1,215 mpg third-place finish we had last year. Even though this is one place lower, there are now more teams overall in this combined category.” 

Université Laval from Quebec, Canada, won the 2017 ICE competition, which attracted student teams from eight countries. Brigham Young University placed second and Mater Dei High School from Indiana finished third. 

Other members of the Cal Poly Supermileage Team included Vice President Caleb Kelsay, Treasurer Sean Michel , Testing Lead Chad Bickel, Steering Lead Will Sirski, Composites/Chassis Lead Aaron Feinstein, Engine/Drivetrain Lead Mike Bolton, Safety Tech Eli Rogers, and Drivers Enyi Liang and Zoe Tuggle.

“Moving into next year's competition, the team already has plans for a completely new chassis design and is beginning manufacturing as soon as testing validates the model,” Rybarczyk said. “The team also has multiple senior projects planned to further improve the steering, drive train and engine subsystems so that the car is even more efficient when it represents Cal Poly at the 2018 Shell Eco-Marathon, which is scheduled to be held in California.”