Ashcroft Press Release
August 11, 2010
Information of the supermileage car that was at Ashcroft last week
Parker Ackley
From: Wesley, Benjamin
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
In early June 2010, Ashcroft Inc. was one of several proud sponsors of a Supermileage
Vehicle built by a team of 21 undergrad engineering students from the
University of New Haven’s chapter of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers
(ASME.) Ashcroft provided a thermal sensor for the car and some financial
assistance for the team to
travel to Michigan to participate in the Society of Automobile Engineers’
(SAE) Supermileage Competition. Our own summer intern from UNH, Matthew
Shaw, was part of the team.
The challenge in this competition is to design and build a single-person,
fuel-efficient vehicle. The vehicle with the best miles-per-gallon rating
and
design wins the competition. The competition challenges students to
set a fuel economy world record,
and serves to raise public awareness of the need to develop more fuel efficient vehicles.
The entry by the UNH team, dubbed The Maelstrom, took a fourth place
in the
technical design category, and the team earned the “Best Demonstrated
Overall
Team Attitude” award. In this year (its second) of competition,
the Maelstrom achieved
500 mpg during track runs. The team has already set goals to reach 850
mpg in 2011 and 1200 mpg in 2012.
Ben Wesley
