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A car for all fuels?
This year Dutch students from Hogeschool Inholland will be taking part in two sustainable driving challenges. With their unique car, they will compete at one event powered by wind and, for their time at Shell Eco-marathon Europe, on biofuel.
Toon Gerritsen and his teammates from Hogeschool Inholland, Delft, the Netherlands, were busy in 2012 preparing Racing Aeolus, an international competition for wind-powered cars. Then they heard that Shell Eco-marathon 2013 would take place in their city. Toon decided to adapt the car to compete in both events.
His team’s streamlined car has a detachable module at the back which houses the different engines. For Racing Aelous the car will use an engine powered by a wind turbine on wheels. For Shell Eco-marathon, team Apollo will swap the engine for one that runs on bio-ethanol.
Toon is already thinking of next year. “We might try and participate in more fuel categories,” he says. “Our paddock would have a whole row of rear sections with different engines including hydrogen, bio-ethanol, petrol and electricity."
But for now Toon’s goal is to succeed in this year’s event and prove the innovative, detachable engine system works.
