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DETROIT (AP) — College and high school students from across North and South America are preparing for a vehicle race this weekend that has nothing to do with speed.
"It's not about who can go the fastest. It's about who can go the furthest," said Alan Caldwell, spokesman for the Shell Eco-marathon Americas event, which runs through Sunday in Detroit.
The annual competition challenges young people to design and build the most fuel-efficient vehicle. Teams tested their creations Friday on a track inside a downtown convention hall. This weekend, they'll run them for real on the streets of Detroit.
"The amount of laps can actually vary. The students just continue to go around and then they come in and the fuel is measured. And based on that measurement, then they do a calculation on how far they've gone on a gallon of gas," Caldwell said.
One of last year's winners, from Universite? Laval in Quebec, achieved 2,824 miles per gallon, which is equivalent to driving from Los Angeles to New York on a single gallon of fuel.
Alvaro Garcia, who captains a team from the University of Texas at El Paso called the Ecominers, hopes their gasoline-fueled prototype vehicle — dubbed "Speedy Pete" — that features parts made on a 3-D printer, fares well.
But for Garcia and his teammates, it's not all about winning or creating new technologies.
"The experience that the students are able to take from this competition is much more valuable," said Garcia, a senior mechanical engineering major who has a job lined up with General Motors in Detroit after he graduates next month.
More than 140 teams from 100 colleges and high schools in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Guatemala are taking part in this year's Shell Eco-marathon Americas.
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Online:
http://www.shell.com/semamericas
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