For the fourth time in five years, Evansville Mater Dei's Supermileage Team brought home a first place trophy from the annual Shell Eco-Marathon in Detroit, Michigan.

The annual Eco-Marathon invites high school and college students from around the world to create concept cars capable of traveling long distances on as little fuel as possible. The event features two categories, Prototype and Urban Concept, each with the energy type subcategories, Gasoline, Battery-Electric, Diesel, CNG, Hydrogen, and Alternative Fuel.

The team from Mater Dei created both a Prototype and an Urban Concept with the latter nabbing them first place.

When all was said and done, their concept car had the ability to travel 337 kilometers on just one liter of gas. In standard measurement, that's 792.673 miles on one gallon! With that kind of mileage, The Rob would be able to drive from Evansville to his home town of Philadelphia without stopping to fill up once.

The team's Prototype car generated 364 kilometers per liter, or 856.181 miles per gallon. Good for a ninth place finish. That's enough to drive from Evansville to New York City on one tank with a little left over.

Of course, as you can see from the photo above, the car needs to be so small and aerodynamic that it wouldn't be practical to drive long distances, however that's not the point of the Eco-Marathon. The point is to give future engineers an opportunity to bring their concepts to life which will hopefully bring advancements in fuel efficiency to the vehicles you and I drive each day.

As a Mater Day graduate, I'm proud to see the current crop of Wildcats out there proudly waving the Mater Dei flag while attempting to improve the quality of life for people around the world. Great job team!

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