Podium for the H2politO Team at the Shell Eco-Marathon Europe

Once again, the H₂politO Team reached the podium in the Shell Eco-Marathon Europe: the IDRAkronos prototype came 2nd in the competition, which took place last weekend at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London in front of 25,000 visitors, of over 170 high-energy futuristic vehicles designed by high school and university students throughout Europe who competed not on speed, but on the ability to design prototypes that can travel as far as possible with the equivalent of one litre of fuel or one kWh  or m³ of energy.

H₂politO is the only Italian university team to have completed the competition and it competed with another 12 vehicles in the hydrogen-powered prototype category. The race vehicle, IDRAkronos, consists of a self-supporting carbon fibre monocoque and is powered by a customised 500W hydrogen fuel cell and a mere 250W high-performance brushed electric motor. Thanks to these features, the prototype recorded a consumption of 831 km/m³ (of hydrogen under normal conditions) which corresponds to approx.  2467 km/L and managed to travel more than the distance between Rome and Kiev (with an improvement of 11% compared to 737 km/m³ or 2188 km/L of last year).

Also the Team's second prototype, XAM, achieved a good 10th place out of 26 participating vehicles in the urban combustion engine category and 4th place out of 7 for the ethanol category, with a consumption of 110 km/L.

Finally, the H₂politO Team also won the Communication Award, the award that is given to the project with the best ability to communicate, on both social as well as traditional media, the characteristics of its project, but also in promoting the competition through collaboration with companies, students and young people. This is not new for the Team, which already won this award four other times (2009, 2010, 2012 and 2014).