Folding Bikes in the Shell Eco Marathon 2009, Lausitz Germany from the NTU Team

The Shell Eco-marathon began in 1939 at a Shell research laboratory in the U.S. as a friendly wager between scientists to see who could get the most miles per gallon from their vehicles. From these humble origins, the organized competition for fuel economy evolved and moved to Europe. The Shell Eco-marathon in its current form began in 1985 in France, attracting thousands of young engineers and scientists from 20 European countries. The Shell Eco-marathon Americas was first held at the California Speedway in 2007.

The principle of the Shell Eco-marathon is simple: to design and build a vehicle that uses the least amount of fuel to travel the farthest distance. At all events, teams can enter futuristic prototypes: streamlined vehicles where the only design consideration is reducing drag and maximizing efficiency. In Europe, there is also the category of more realistic ?UrbanConcept? vehicles, designed to meet the needs of today?s drivers. Conventional fuels such as diesel, petrol/gasoline and liquid petroleum gas, as well as alternatives like GTL, solar, ethanol, hydrogen and biofuels can power the vehicles. As long as teams adhere to safety rules, the design of their vehicles is limited only by their imagination.

--http://www.shell.com/home/content/eco-marathon-en/about/about.html

Nanyang Technological University's debut entry in this competition was a bullet-train themed solar car that utilized 5m^2 of mono-crystalline cells that were coupled with a weight efficient lithium polymer battery pack and a 98% efficient 1kW brushless motor.

Despite being one of the heaviest cars in its category, the car was rated 4th out of the 9 solar cars that registered for the competition and was awarded the 2nd Prize in the ADAC Safety Awards. During the event, drivers were allowed to familiarize themselves using bicycles. The bicycles available to the NTU team were folding bikes, a Bike Friday Tikit and a Pacific Cycles Carryme.

The tikit was a personal bike that was purchased from Diginexx, and the Carryme was a bicycle on loan from Diginexx.