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Your too generous, its not a car. It is a rolling science project, a trike, something no one could drive to work or play.

I want to see work done with existing vehicles, full safety and comfort features, where through inexpensive aerodynamic changes and propulsion tricks improve on what manufacturers offer now.

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Thanks for posting this. My own first thoughts on seeing the project were: looks like a soapbox racer (and I laughed watching a video where they gave it a manual push down a slope to get it going), does France not have speed bumps or steep driveways or road litter, what's its top speed, and how survivable is a collision? This competition is just pure PR for Shell and other companies, engineering constraints for an actual car don't seem to matter. (I'm sure the students enjoy it and learn a lot though.)

Speed bumps would be prohibitive for F1 too. Yet, many technologies perfected in F1 made their ways into every day cars.

This is a race car. The purpose of the race is not to be the fastest but to consume the least amount of petrol.

Have you seen the VW 1-litre car?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car

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