U-Mich Engineering Students Aim for 3,300 mpg Car

A team of engineering students at the University of Michigan is finalizing work on a one-passenger car it says will be able to run 3,300 miles on a single gallon of gasoline.

The car will compete on June 7-8 in the SAE International Supermileage Challenge. The event is staged at Eaton Corp.'s proving ground in Marshall, Mich.

The current record-holder for the SAE event is a car made by students at Laval Universite in Quebec that logged 3,169 mpg in 2008.

Entrants are required to power their cars with a single-piston, 3.5-hp Briggs & Stratton four-stroke lawnmower engine, which may be heavy modified. The UM car, for example, will use a special fuel injection system designed by one of the team members. The system's developers claim the technology could cut emissions from an unmodified motorcycle or moped engine 50-fold.

SAE has conducted the Supermileage event since 1996. That year's winning student team from Quebec's Universite de Sherbrooke fielded a car that delivered 962 mpg. The same school won last year's event with a car rated at 2,158 mpg.