Meet Eta, the World’s Most Efficient Electric Vehicle

A second world record!

We’re ecstatic to announce that our 2019 competitor, Eta, has successfully broken the Guinness World Record for Most Efficient Electric Vehicle! With a staggering performance of 797 mi/kWh, 1283 km/kWh, or 27,482 MPGe, Eta could drive around the world on less than a gallon of gasoline equivalent. It’s been a long road to reach this point, with countless days and nights spent in the lab building and measuring each component, and the incredible design and analysis work of the team.

The vehicle features significantly improved aerodynamics compared to Maxwell, a highly-efficient direct drive motor, a tracking step-down converter to minimize motor controller switching losses, and a numerically optimized driver strategy.

After a disappointing Eco-Marathon performance in 2019, where the team did not set a score, we were even more determined to push Eta to the limit of performance. Over the summer of 2019, the team repeatedly tested and improved Eta. With initial testing showing a performance of 540 mi/kWh, 40% below the previous record, the team was undaunted in pushing to understand where losses were coming from. Over the next seven weeks, the car was iteratively improved and measured, reaching scores of 710 mi/kWh, then 730. On the day of the record attempt, we set an official score of 797 mi/kWh!

This breaks the record held by TU Munich’s eli-14, which previously set the electric efficiency record at 765 mi/kWh. While this performance is incredible, the team is not entirely satisfied, knowing that a further increase in score of 5-10% is possible with better conditions. To ensure fairness, the vehicle drove at an average speed of 15.0 mph while carrying a 50 kg driver, the same conditions as the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas.

Read more about it here!

For more details, please refer to the specifications and technical blog. If those don’t answer your questions, contact us and we would love to tell you more about the vehicle!