Hydrogen car made of carbon: Ecorunner XI

The Eco-Runner Team Delft 2020-2021 consists of 23 students Technische Universiteit Delft. For one year, they are fully committed to thinking of, designing, making and presenting a hydrogen-powered city car. With this, they participate in the annual Shell Eco Marathon, in which student teams from all over the world compete for the title of ‘most efficient hydrogen-powered car’.

The Eco-Runner Team is divided into several divisions. In December and January, the Body Department built the carbon body of the Ecorunner XI in our production halls. We taught them the tricks of the trade of working with composites and carbon pre-preg. After laminating the product in the mold, the curing process followed under vacuum in our Autoclave.

After a few weeks of construction, the carbon body was ready and the team was able to reveal the design in mid-February. They did this completely corona-proof via a Zoom livestream with more than 300 viewers present. At the end of April, the big unveiling of the Ecorunner XI took place: Watch the video on YouTube

Unfortunately, the Shell Eco Marathon 2021 will not take place due to the situation surrounding Covid-19. But next summer, the Ecorunner XI will still compete with other hydrogen-powered cars from other student teams. Because creative as they are, the student teams have come up with a number of smaller competitions themselves. In this way, an interesting competition can still be held in a safe way, which can be followed online in style.

We found it an honor and pleasure to work with the engineers of the future to build the Ecorunner XI, the greenest city car in the world. As an innovative composite company that is working hard to make the construction sector more sustainable through biobased composite, we wish the Eco-Runner Team every success with the upcoming, self-organized challenges!