About Us.The Northern Illinois University Supermileage Team is a student run collegiate design team focused on designing, manufacturing, and testing vehicles that achieve the highest energy-efficiency possible. Started in 2008, we have proven time and again that our ultra-efficient vehicles are among the best in their respective classes as well as extremely reliable. In 2018, we ran our Gasoline Prototype Vehicle, with which we achieved 1888 mpg and achieved 2nd place in the world as well as the endurance award at SAE Supermileage Int'l. In 2019, we took 1st place at the Shell Eco-Marathon out of 30 teams for 8 countries. In 2020, we further developed our gas prototype and finished our battery-electric prototype vehicles, but competitions were cancelled due to COVID-19. Through a design report and verbal presentation challenge at SAE, we still took home 3rd place. This competition year, we are running a Battery-Electric Prototype for the in addition to our Gasoline vehicle. We achieve such high efficiency by building our vehicles to be extremely light and aerodynamic, structurally robust, and have impressively low rolling resistance.
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Awards at SAE Supermileage 2018, Michigan
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Internal Combustion Vehicle at Shell Eco-Marathon Americas 2019
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NIU Supermileage is operated entirely by undergraduate students from a range of years and majors and are advised by a faculty member, operating under the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology. We meet two times a week to get our vehicles ready for competition, starting from the ground up, with in-house designing all the way to machining our final components. The team is currently in its 12th year of operation, after starting as a senior design project. In addition to our competitions, we also attend numerous events around the Northern Illinois area to advertise our team, promote energy efficiency, and represent the university to industry, alumni, and prospective students.
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The Competition. We compete in two different international competitions. The first is Shell Eco-Marathon Americas (SEMA), which runs at Sonoma Raceway in California. At this competition we run both our Gas and Electric vehicles against universities from across North and South America (30 teams). SEMA takes place in the spring.
The other competition we attend is SAE Supermileage, an international competition sponsored by Eaton in Marshall, Michigan. At this competition, we only run our Gas Prototype. SAE Supermileage takes place in the summer. |
Shell Eco-Marathon at Sonoma Raceway, California
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