West Philly Students Honored by Popular Mechanics Magazine

[Dave Smith]

160 MPG Factory Five Bio-Diesel GTM Hybrid Rock Star!

http://www.factoryfive.com/whatsnew/press/popmech/images/westphilly/4.jpg

The culmination of two years of work came Monday night, October 10th with a special award ceremony at the Hearst Publishing building in Manhattan where Simon Hauger and his West Philly High School students received a prestigious Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics magazine.

Read the full story here. (http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/hybrids/how-west-philly-students-built-a-hybrid-supercar?click=main_sr)

Factory Five's Jason Lavigne was on hand for the awards ceremony and met filmmaker James Cameron among others and was available to answer questions on the eco-based GTM project.

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[riptide motorsport]

That is just so amazing and inspiring.

[crash]

Fantastic job. :)

[kabacj]

Guys notice the rear diffuser treatment. These kids went to the boeing wind tunnel three times.

Just an observation maybe we can learn from. Smoothly reconnecting the airflow from under the car would lower the drag of the car.

John

[Dave Smith]

The November 2011 issue of Popular Mechanics includes a front page blurb that states:

"The 160 MPG Car built by high school students!"

And inside is a feature on the TDI-powered GTM hyper mileage car built by the kids at West Philly High School and directed by faculty adviser Simon Hauger.

Each year, Popular Mechanics celebrates the year's best and boldest inventions. Our car shared this honor with James Cameron and his deep sea camera rig technology, the Mars rover, a cell phone tower in the palm of your hand, a cure for paralysis, and bird-like flying robot as well as a reasonable space capsule and a super-efficient engine design... pretty serious company.

We are super proud of the accomplishments made by Simon's team and have an agreement going forward to integrate this technology into our newest 818 chassis.

Factory Five Racing

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[fastthings]

congratulations Dave,
I'm sure your floting on cloud "5" right now.

Gene

[Presto51]

The November 2011 issue of Popular Mechanics includes a front page blurb that states:

"The 160 MPG Car built by high school students!"

And inside is a feature on the TDI-powered GTM hyper mileage car built by the kids at West Philly High School and directed by faculty adviser Simon Hauger.

Each year, Popular Mechanics celebrates the year's best and boldest inventions. Our car shared this honor with James Cameron and his deep sea camera rig technology, the Mars rover, a cell phone tower in the palm of your hand, a cure for paralysis, and bird-like flying robot as well as a reasonable space capsule and a super-efficient engine design... pretty serious company.

We are super proud of the accomplishments made by Simon's team and have an agreement going forward to integrate this technology into our newest 818 chassis.

Factory Five Racing

Very Nice I like hearing about these kind of success stories

Just wondering if this agreement would cover the other Factory Five models as well?

[AVIONX]

I sincerely hope nobody takes this the wrong way. I am only trying to gain accurate information and speak factually while praising and lifting up what this High School team has done. What I am confused about are the statements made on this forum of 160MPG in a GTM and folks extrapolating 170MPG with the same powertrain in an 818. But when this car competed in the X Prize they got disqualified for not being able to achieve 67MPGe. Quote from X-Prize website "Failure to meet minimum 67 MPGe requirement for on-road fuel efficiency" Can someone please help me out. If I am out there praising these guys and my statements are untrue, I will just end up taking away from their very good accomplishments.

[crash]

I am unfamiliar with the particulars of the car, the rules, or the stated disqualification. The only thing that makes sense here is that MPGe stands for "MPG electric". In other words the miles that can be driven on electricty alone? That's all I can think of since it does not appear to be a stand alone electric, could they have been caught by a rule technicality? Just guessing here. If you know for certain what MPGe is, please do tell.

[AVIONX]

MPGe is Miles Per Gallon Equivalent. It is a termed used to unify comparison (although it's known to be good, but not to be perfect since prices fluctuate and there are other variables) between all fuel types. Gas/Deisel/Electric/Hydrogen/Hybrid. It is the simplest formula so far for consumers to understand the Fuel cost of a vehicle. I think for a deisel, like the West Philly GTM, they take a little MPG hit becuase Deisel costs more per gallon than gas in the US.