The Sepuluh November Institute of Technology (ITS) team from Surabaya, East Java, won the Asia Pacific energy-saving car competition titled “Shell Eco Marathon Asia 2012” at Sepang, Malaysia on July 4-7.
With its “Sapu Angin” car model the ITS team won the “Urban Concept” champion title, the head of ITS Technical Engineering Department, Dr Ir Bambang Pramujati MScEng PhD, said in his e-mail from Malaysia received here on Saturday evening.
“Although the Sapu Angin 6 and Antasena 1 teams failed in the prototype class the Sapu Angin 7 team competing in the Urban Concept was able to come out as the champion,” he said.
The team won the champion title after its car recorded an efficiency rate of 167 kilometer per liter at an optimal performance since the first to the last race.
In the Urban Category the ITS team was able to beat fellow team from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) that could only make of an efficiency rate record of 149 kilometers per liter.
ITS has taken part in the annual competition three times. “What has made us proud is that the 167 kilometer per liter efficiency rate record is above the last record made in 2011 which was also made by ITS team. At the time the ITS team could only record an efficiency rate of 150 kilometers per liter,” he said.
He said the ITS team had first been confused by the calculation results from Shell before that showed the ITS team’s record was behind that of the Garuda team from ITB which was 192 kilometer per liter in the first race.
“However Shell finally saw inconsistency and after a review was made it discovered that mistakes had been made,” he said.
In the first race the Sapu Angin car from ITS had won with a record of 161 kilometer per liter compared to 142 kilometer per liter made by the ITB team because the fuel used in the Urban Concept category is fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) and it was also participated in by teams from Indonesia (ITS and ITB) and so the competition was tight.
After the first race the Sapu Angin 7 car continuously showed positive results from race 1 to five making the team to become the champion in the class.
Sapu Angin car is a future care using bio-diesel fuel or FAME which is the development of Sapu Angin 5.
In several tests the car is able to go up to 300 kilometers using a liter of diesel fuel.
The Sapu Angin 6 in the prototype class is the latest generation and designed lighter than the previous generation weighing only 35 kilograms compared to 50 kilograms of the previous one.
“The Sapu Angin 6 car that used gasoline and competed in the prototype class had initially been expected to be the Asian champion,” the general manager of the ITS Sapu Angin 2012 team, Yoga Dwi Widagdo.
The Antasena car which was just created by ITS students this year uses hydrogen. The car that competes in the prototype class is a new innovation of the students of the Metallurgy Material Engineering designed to become a green car.
This year the competition initiated by Shell was attended by 136 teams from 18 countries in Asia including five countries that had just participated in it this year namely Lebanon, Qatar, the Uni Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and South Korea.
Of the total 91 took part in the prototype and 45 in the Urban Concept, he said.
