Cambridge Design Partnership technology powers eco car

The annual Mileage Marathon Challenge, which took place today at Mallory Park motor track near Leicester, is intended to promote engineering and technology to school and college students, as well as eco-friendly vehicle concepts.



As BBC TV reported earlier this year, Cambridge Design Partnership designed an oxygen-generator system to deliver oxygen to injured frontline soldiers. This system, powered by an innovative micro-diesel-engine, removed the need to take heavy and potentially explosive oxygen canisters onto the battlefield. This project involved Cambridge Design Partnership’s evaluation of a variety of miniature engines, one of which was selected to power this remarkable vehicle.



The vehicle also features low friction tyres to increase mileage, and was tracked using Cambridge Design Partnership’s ‘Go’ real-time tracking service. The Go technology allows live tracking to be integrated into products and services easier than ever before, and has previously been used to track the Tour of Britain cycle race and promotional vehicles for a novel marketing campaign around Paris. In this case, the live telemetry provided by Go allowed the team to optimise the race strategy for the eco-car, adding an impressive 150mpg to the specialist vehicle. It also made it more interesting for supporters, allowing them to see the live speed and location of the car using their Smartphone from wherever they happened to be.



The vehicle was driven by local schoolgirl Kitty Foster, 11, of Kings School, Ely. CDP extends its congratulations to Kitty and King’s School for such an impressive achievement.



“When I told my parents how far this car could go on a gallon of fuel they were absolutely amazed!” Kitty commented. “Actually, it wasn’t too hard. The Go system helped me use as little fuel as possible. It monitored the car’s performance which helped us know when to stop the engine and start coasting. The GPS information made a big difference and added 150 mpg. The whole car was great fun to drive. It’s good to see cars getting more environmentally friendly, and I’m really pleased we’ve done so well in the challenge’.



“This is about more than just an ultra-eco-friendly car,” commented Stephen Lamb, the MoD project leader from CDP. “This supports what our technologies can achieve. We quickly realised that our R&D work for the MoD, creating an Oxygen generator, was highly applicable to the Mileage Marathon Challenge. Both required an extremely efficient system that used very low power and could run off diesel. Now I just need to figure out how to make my own car get the same kind of mileage!”



This project underlines the potential of the oxygen generator as a product for military and humanitarian applications. Where electricity is not readily available, for example on the battlefield, diesel can be a highly convenient form of power. The Oxygen generator is another example of how Cambridge Design Partnership focus on developing new products that use technology to meet genuine human needs.



Cambridge Design Partnership is available to apply its innovative research, design and development talents in a range of specialist fields, including consumer, healthcare, military, industrial and cleantech.