A prelude to the 2017 Shell Ecomarathon Asia

WE may live at a time when there is a struggle to source sustainable power, but one thing is for sure – we are certainly nothing short of brain power! And this is evidenced time and again during the annual legs of the Shell Ecomarathon – a highly commendable competition where the brightest students converge to design, engineer and build futuristic, ultra-efficient vehicles that can run the farthest distance on the least amount of energy.

The Asian leg, aptly dubbed the Shell Ecomarathon Asia (SEMA), began in Sepang, Malaysia back in 2010 and has since been highly regarded and participated in, by students from all over the continent. In the last three years, SEMA was hosted at a specially built city track in Luneta Park, Manila, right in time for Pilipinas Shell’s festive centennial celebration of its companies in the Philippines; and the event series was a huge success not only in carrying out the competition, but also in enticing more Filipino engineering students from other schools in taking on the challenge.

This 2017, the Shell Ecomarathon Asia will be held in mid- March at the Changi Exhibition Center in Singapore ( the host country changes every three years), and as it is traditionally held, it will be a public event that will feature not only the actual student competition, but also concurrent exhibits, forums and presentations that showcase the future of energy and prospective (and often, mind-blowing) solutions that are meant to address the global energy challenge.

And because Filipino students just can’t seem to get enough of this scientific challenge to their creativity (and also because our engineering students want to up their game with a little head-start), Pilipinas Shell decided to hold a mini, pre-event SEM in Clark just over the weekend this February, with the goal of helping our local colleges and universities test their vehicles out. And if they’ve done their homework well, maybe even win some cash prizes, which their teams could use to supplement the shipping costs of their project vehicles, to participate in Singapore.

Apart from several Manilabased colleges and universities who have already become mainstays in the annual competition – such as Mapua Institute of Technology; University of the Philippines, Diliman ( UP); Technological Institute of the Philippines ( TIP); Adamson University; Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila ( PLM); De La Salle University (DLSU); University of Santo Tomas (UST) and National University (NU) – a handful of new teams also began participating this year, including students from: Ateneo de Manila University ( ADMU); Ateneo de Davao University; De La Salle Dasmarinas; Malayan Colleges Laguna; Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT); University of San Carlos; and University of Mindanao, among others.

Clearly, this is testament that the word has been spreading – and this pre-event competition of the Shell Ecomarathon is an amazing opportunity for new schools to test the waters and participate, without the pressure of having to source a much larger budget, as is required for participating in Singapore (e.g. having a budget for shipping costs, plus plane tickets and lodging abroad).

Although this is a smaller scale version of the Shell Ecomarathon Asia, it is an excellent avenue for learning and benchmarking one’s project car, as it follows exactly the same rules and standard for qualifying through technical inspection in the Asia-wide competition. So in other words – if your car passes through technical inspection in Clark, and successfully makes qualifying runs on the track, then you can be quite confident that you’ll qualify to make a run in SEMA Singapore.

Otherwise (if you don’t make it), it only means that your team needs to make a few more tweaks – with a little more time before Singapore!

Just as with the annual SEMA, Pilipinas Shell’s Clark pre-event also accepted entries in two categories: the prototype and urban vehicle categories. Prototype cars are the funkier, ultra-energy-efficient vehicles that frequently look like spaceships with pointy tips, that carry their drivers around in awkward – often lying – driving positions. Meanwhile, the urban concept vehicle entries are the relatively more ‘roadworthy’ vehicles, that actually look like cars – only smaller – but are still highly energyefficient. Part of the requirements of urban concept vehicle entries is that the driver should be sitting in an upright position, and that the vehicle should be able to make full stops at designated areas in the course (as with real vehicles, which are meant to operate in a daily stop-go environment).

Aside from being sorted between being a prototype car or an urban concept vehicle, the student entries were divided into two groups for this Clark mini-Ecomarathon: The internal combustion entries; and the alternate energy-source entries. So basically, there were winners based on which cars traveled the farthest distance on a single unit of energy, per independent category. And to everyone’s delight, cash prizes awaited all teams who won themselves an award.

And the teams who emerged as the winners in the 2017 Shell Ecomarathon Clark pre-event are:

Student teams, their advisers and Shell executives pose next to the studentbuilt, ultra-energy-efficient vehicles at the Clark International Speedway.

All teams must first pass a rigid technical inspection before they are allowed to make any valid runs.

Despite bringing their project all the way from Mindanao, Team Blue Knights 1 from Ateneo de Davao bagged 3rd place in the Prototype Category, internal combustion division.

The winning teams in this year’s Shell Ecomarathon Asia Pre-event competition held at Clark International Speedway

Pilipinas Shell’s new Country Chairman Cesar Romero flags off the SEMA pre-event together with other Shell executives and guest model Diana Menezes.

UP Dilman’s “DAGISIK UP” is a battery-electric Urban Concept mainly sponsored by Meralco.

UST has been one of the mainstay participants of the annual Shell Ecomarathon Asia.