The Széchenyi István University and it’s student electric vehicle developmenter team SZEnergy has surpassed every other noteable university on the continent by finishing at first place in the self-driving and small city car category at the biggest vehicle energy efficiency competition in Europe, Shell Eco-marathon. The achievement highlights not only the teams hands-on oriented learning method, but also its good talent management too.
In the Széchenyi István University’s SZEnergy Team’s history, the biggest achievement to date was in last June when they won in the small city car category at the Shell Eco-marathon’s Assen Netherlands race where they also set a world record with 284 km/kWh. Last year, the winning streak continued in July when they reached the second place in the self-driving category at Nogaro Paul Armagnac track located in France.
This year the Shell Eco-marathon arranged category’s races to be held in Nogaro parallelly between May 19th and 25th.
The only Hungarian team was Széchenyi’s SZEnergy, who set out the goal of reaching first place in both categories within a very strong field of competition. With luck and determination, the team succeeded with the two wins as well as setting again this year a new world record of 291 km/kWh.
Huge celebration: the SZEnergy Team finished at first place in two seperate categories. (Picture: Dudás Máté)
The SZEnergy Team’s self-driving sub-development group member Mesics Mátyás explained that the self-driving category race consisted of three different tasks. First, the vehicle had to race on a track 1,2 km long, then afterwards it had to navigate through a second manueverablity track made up with multiple buoys. Lastly the vehicle, had to complete a parking tasky by placing itself between two parked cars in self-driving mode without any human interaction. ” The tasks gave us a range of continuous challanges, we had to complete them one after another. When the car reached the finish line of a task, it had to start the next task immediately” – recounted Mesics Mátyás
The SZEnergy’s car has stood out among the other vehicles. (Picture: Dudás Máté)
The SZEnergy Team arrived in France this year as a title defender in the small city car category, and therefore everybody knew that they had a strong chance to come out on top and to win, but the results even surprised the Hungarian members themselves.
Széchenyi István University’s students car on the Nogaroian race track. (Picture: Dudás Máté)
”We didn’t expect a new world record. Firstly because the Nogaroian race track is at a higher elevantion compared to the Assenian track so it’s harder to have less energy consumption. This was seen in our rivals results who couldn’t improve compared to last year… but we did somehow. Also, what played a big part in our success is that our car had been built on last year’s chassis saving us time and allowing us to focus on all the other new design changes needed due to this year’s new race rules, which included improvements to our electronic system, suspension springs, and the drive cycle mechanism strategy software. Thanks to our new telematics development, during the race we could monitor both the vehicle and the pilot”
- explained Pusztai Zoltán, Széchenyi István University pHd student and, SZEnergy mentor.
” I congratulate the SZEnergy Team members for their astonishing results. It proves again and again that our University produces outstanding results with our practice oriented learning methods and talent management policies even at the international level. A further contribution to the University of Győr’s success is its European state-of-art developmental ecosystem including the modern infrastructure of the ZalaZONE test track, now owned by the Foundation of the Széchenyi István University which is and will be very important for our student team’s innovatitivity by helping them proctect their world record holder title” – emphasized Dr. Filep Bálint, the president of Széchenyi István University.