Mizzou Hydrogen Car Team races to victory
The Mizzou Hydrogen Car Team brought home two awards and $2,500 from the annual Shell Eco-Marathon competition last week in Houston.
The team earned first place in the hydrogen category of the urban concept competition, earning $1,500. The team placed fourth overall in the competition.
MHCT also won best team spirit among the 68 teams present for the enthusiastic cheering of its members and the tiger tail sported by the car, TigerGen II, during the races. This title came with a prize of $1,000.
TigerGen II successfully completed six races. MHCT spokeswoman Victoria Hezel said the car achieved a record 14.2 miles per kilowatt-hour — or about 490 miles per gallon equivalent of gasoline.
To Hezel, this victory after two consecutive years of not placing is important to the team’s outlook going into next year’s competition.
“We’re so pumped for next year,” she said. “The team can’t wait to go back. This win is very motivating.”
Hezel said it’s going to be hard since the team has to turn its design into a fully-functional car in a year’s time.
“We’re going to do a lot more testing next year,” Hezel said. “Last year, we didn’t do a lot of testing, and this year, since we already had the car built, we got to do a lot of testing. So, this coming year, we’re going to aim to do as much as we can.”
The next car will keep some features that worked this time, such as the gears and the use of motorcycle wheels. However, some changes are in store.
“The body’s going to look completely different, and we’re going to use different fuel cells,” she said.
Next year’s car will be larger to accommodate larger drivers for the race.
“This one was designed around the 110-pound girl driver that we have, and the next one will be designed for somebody a little bit taller so that the boys can fit in it and drive it comfortably,” Hezel said.