The SZEnergy Team, which builds and develops electric racing cars, has taken part in the Shell Eco Marathon in France, a competition with a history stretching back almost 100 years, every year since 2008. The team, highly successful in recent years, has now won first place in two categories and set a new world record in the energy efficiency category for the third year in a row – after 2022 and 2023. More than 5,000 students from over 16 countries took part in this year’s competition held in Nogaro, France, in May.
Between 18 and 20 May, participants in the Autonomous City Car category performed self-driving, obstacle manoeuvring and parking tasks with their cars in fully autonomous mode, without human intervention. This year, the SZEnergy Team outperformed Dutch, Norwegian, Italian, German and Turkish rivals in the competition, finishing first with a speed result of 75 km/kWh, defending its previous title.
The team also took part in the Energy Efficiency category of the competition between 20 and 24 May. In this category, the battery-powered prototype vehicle completed a 1,600-metre circuit. A special feature of this competition was that the driver had to stop once during each lap to simulate urban traffic. Out of 23 teams from ten countries in its category, SZEnergy’s vehicle won again this year with a specially optimised tactic, setting a new world record of 309 km/kWh, improving its previous world record by 18 km/kWh.
“We are particularly proud of the fact that in the Autonomous category our team completed all three tasks perfectly in two out of four attempts, something no other team managed to do. Our result in the Energy Efficiency category means that our car travelled the distance with such low fuel consumption that it would have travelled 309 kilometres using 1 kWh, the equivalent of using a hairdryer for an hour. We set another world record with our result”, said Balázs Für, Team Leader of SZEnergy Team.
The 36-strong team, which has been developing the winning car since 2019, consists of four groups: engineering, electronics, autonomous vehicles, and marketing & management. Self-driving is made as perfect as possible by sensors and onboard computing units, as well as situational awareness from the mobile network. Yettel has been providing the team with a reliable internet connection, which is essential for the precise positioning of the vehicle both during testing in Hungary and at international competitions. Mobile technology is an essential part of the future of transport, so it’s important for the mobile operator to support R&D in the automotive industry.