The Urban Concept Car: A Look at Safety and Inspections

Urban concept cars are not allowed to be heavier than 205 kg, a weight limit that is strictly enforced for safety reasons. This is evident in the weighing scale that is used to determine the weight of each car, which must meet this strict standard in order to participate in the competition. The weight limit is in place to prevent any substantial crashes that could occur during the course of the event.

One of the unique features of urban concept cars is their design. Many students who participate in the competition give their cars a distinct look that not only makes them visually attractive but also draws attention. This is evident in the examples shown, including a DeLorean and a Raids of the Lost AR Bas car. The designers of these cars are given the freedom to create unique designs that showcase their creativity and ingenuity.

Safety is taken very seriously at the competition, with one of the first checks being the seat belt inspection. All cars must be equipped with proprietary racing-style seat belts, specifically five-point seat belts with a single buckle. The safety of each driver is paramount, and therefore, this check is conducted to ensure that all drivers are properly secured while competing. A static test is used to simulate a crash scenario, and the seat belt must be able to withstand a weight of 700 Newtons, equivalent to roughly the driver's weight.

The inspection process also includes a dimension check, which is crucial for ensuring the safety of each car. There are up to 12 different dimensions that each car must meet, including track width. The inspection process uses gauges to quickly and accurately judge whether the car meets these standards. In this case, the car's low profile and narrow width suggest that it should pass this check without issue.

Next, electric vehicles undergo a special inspection process that takes longer than other cars due to the complexity of their systems. Inspectors check the entire circuitry from the battery to the motor, as well as hidden sources such as additional batteries. The nominal voltage must not exceed 48 volts, and there is no size limitation on the batteries in terms of kilowatt hours or physical size. Teams are also encouraged to build their own batteries if they wish, provided that they meet the required capacity to manage the 10 laps required for each competition.

Finally, hydrogen vehicles undergo a leak test and pressure test to ensure compliance with safety regulations. These tests are designed to detect any potential issues with the hydrogen system before it is used in the competition. The voltage limitation on electrical systems is 60 volts, which is an important safety consideration.

The inspection process involves over 100 checking points, spread across eight stations. Inspectors use a computer-based system to quickly and accurately evaluate each car against these criteria. If a car passes all checks, it receives a notification indicating that it has been approved for competition. Drivers can then go out on the track and compete, subject to any necessary adjustments before they feel confident in their vehicle's performance.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome I am here with Norman kotch he is the technical director of the shell Ecom marathon and we're going to be walking through the technical inspection and the different stages along the way of the things you have to pass so Norman let's have a look let's go so what do we have here first well first we see the administrative stage where all drivers and vehicles are tagged and we are checking that drivers and vehicles are matched we're using an RFID tag and at every stage and throughout the competition the whole week uh they're being scanned whether they belong to together whether they have had the safety checks the technical checks or whether the driver have been to the right briefings okay then we see here these very unassuming personal scales but that is very important because we have driver weight limits and we have lower driver weight limits so the minimum weight for a driver has to be 50 kilos in a prototype car okay and that is quite relevant because most cars only weigh 40 50 kilog so 10 kilos difference in a driver make quite a difference now is that Target normally hit and what happens if you're underneath that 50 kg yeah we've seen the drivers getting lighter and lighter and we didn't quite see like that trend of course drivers who weigh less can run still but they have to fit Ballas to the car okay and can they choose where to place that yes it is entirely up to the team where to mount the ballast as long as it's safe so what do we have here next here we are now getting to the fueling station for internal combustion engine cars at this station our inspectors check whether the fuel system is compliant okay the main purpose of the shell Eco Marathon rule is to check whether the cars are either safe or whether they are compliant in sense of fairness okay so we have inspectors here looking for little cavities or for little places where fuel could be hidden because the purpose of shelo marathon is to account for all the fuel that is being used so there must be no little bubbles there must be no little cavities and also you see here on this stand that all the fuels that competitors use we give a distinct color every year Now The Pump Fuel you get from your regular Shell station typically is not red or green or blue but this year you see for instance gasoline has been died red and the whole reason is that we want to see in each car that the competition approved fuel is being used and that competitors don't play with the fuels so what are the different types of fuels that we have out here in total this year competitors can choose from six different energies okay there are four liquid fuels gasoline and Diesel there is a biofuel ethanol ethanol 100 and there is GTL gas to liquid okay and then there are two electric drivetrains possible a battery electric car and a hydrogen fuel cell car okay and and all of those are they competing against each other or within their category yeah the concept of shell Eco marathon is that each energy has its own winner in its own right because we realize that the energy challenge that we're all facing will require multiple Solutions not a single bullet and so we want to give each fuel the same chance to to be developed to its Optimum okay and so the students choose and the students win in their own category so we have in the end six winners for six different energy types now do you have an idea of which of these energy types are usually the top most fuel efficient vehicles as I said yeah as I said we don't compare the fuels between each other um we are we simply achieve very high fuel efficiency at the moment with gasoline okay but that is also attributed partly to the fact that 40% of all competitors run on gasoline sure is going into it but then again um ethanol is also almost equally as efficient okay as gasoline because we also cross correct for energy density okay so because it's less energy dense it gets a basically a boosting in the so all numbers that all numbers that we produce for the fuels are energy corrected and and and normalized to one liter of gasoline equivalent okay all right so that's the Baseline one important Point probably to mention as well is the entire fuel system in these vehicles has to be transparent that means the fuel tank is from glass and all fuel lines must be translucent so we want to be able to see the colored fuel running from the tank up to the injector and that there is no other contributing energies to it sure that makes sense and so what is this test that we've got going on right now what you see here is the test that is most frequently failed by shell eom Marathon competitors is the brake test all cars are required to have two independent brake systems and they must work work independently and the test consists out of this 20% ramp on which the car must remain stationary when only one brake is applied and here we're seeing a good example of a of a car an unfortunate example of a car where one brake system is not sufficient to keep it stationary in its position what teams typically have to do is go back to their pedok readjust their brakes tighten them or drain the hydraulic fuel system or tighten the cables and come back to repeat that inspection so does it have to pass with both in independent brake systems both brake systems must be working independently okay and each one has to hold it on the grade correct okay and what percent grade is this 20% okay now on the other side of this grade what what testing do we have going on right here over there we see the scale so there are weight limits to the vehicles okay prototype and here we see an urban concept car Urban concept cars are not allowed to be heavier than 205 kg and this is simply um a weighing scale to determine how much this car weighs and this limit is in place for safety reasons if we have a collision outside on the track we want no car to be any heavier than another significantly in order to cause any any substantial crashes that makes sense what we see actually very often is that many uh students give their car a distinct design which not only that it looks visually attractive but also it creates attention it creates attention and sponsors are very very important yeah we were just checking out there's a DeLorean and then a Raiders of the Lost AR Bas car so after the weight check what are we moving on to next next is another very important safety check it's the seat belt text all cars have to be equipped with the propriety racing style seat belts Five Point seat belts with a single belt buckle so is this supplied by shell do you have to use the same one or is just any okay any proprietary can be bought in Motorsport C shops sure with five points and the way we tested is again a static test we will basically suspend the car and the driver on the belt buckle from this strain gauge up to a weight of 700 Newtons it must withhold 700 Newtons so basically roughly the driver's weight must be able to be pulled on so the strain gauge is now attached to the belt buckle okay so that was a pass that was a pass so it uh got all the way up to 75 kilos that is sufficient uh to get out on the track from the perspective of the safety belt okay so after safety belt what are we moving on to next the next stage is a simple Dimension check although I say simple the rules prescribe various up to I think 12 different dimensions that the car is to be within this is more or less for practicality and safety reason that no car is unduly large long and here we have a simple gauge which is helps the uh inspectors to quickly judge is the car uh higher than than it should be is it wider than it should be and what you see on the bottom indicates the track width so are these there's two different sizes here for the two different types of vehicles yes here this serves as a as a as a gauge for both the Prototype and the urban concept cars and uh obviously the uh inspectors look at it roughly now this car clearly is uh sufficiently low it's also not as wide as it should be if anything gets close to the measures then they will take um a gauge and measure accurately okay so moving on from the dimension inspection where are we going next now we're going to a special area where our electric vehicles are inspected okay and here we have several inspection Bays because the inspection of an electric vehicle takes a little longer because we have to inspect the entire circuitry from the battery over the fusing over the circuit breakers to the motor and also check for hidden contributing sources like hidden batteries okay and here we also inspect our hydrogen vehicles um and we do leak tests we do pressure tests so to check that the hydrogen system is uh compliant with our rules now is there a voltage limitation on the electrical systems yes the um shell Ecom Marathon limit for any voltage system is 60 volts 60 volts is there a size limitation on the batteries as far as kilowatt hours physical size there is none the nominal voltage must not be exceeding 48 volts okay and then it's as far as like the duration that it can the teams have to size their batteries in terms of capacity to manage the 10 laps that they are required to run which is about uh 6 per lap so 10 it has to be um 6 miles so they're given the flexibility to choose the battery size as far as as far as how long it's going to last based on their efficiencies they're even encouraged to build their own batteries if they wish to from single cells just to make them fit and ideally to be only as big as necessary for one successful run this pretty much concludes the actual inspection because the inspection in detail entails more than 100 checking points wow which are distributed over those eight stations and we have a computer-based system where the inspectors lock a pass or a fail on each of these 100 criteria and at the end the participants are given a notification what they have passed what they have failed then they can go back fit it and come back as often as necessary fix it and come back as often as necessary to have it rechecked and as soon as they have passed on criteria they get their race sticker and can go out on the track and compete so as soon as they pass they can go straight out um and then until they do pass they coming back as many times as it takes yes that's correct well thank you Norman for your help and taking us through this that was pretty cool thank youhello everyone and welcome I am here with Norman kotch he is the technical director of the shell Ecom marathon and we're going to be walking through the technical inspection and the different stages along the way of the things you have to pass so Norman let's have a look let's go so what do we have here first well first we see the administrative stage where all drivers and vehicles are tagged and we are checking that drivers and vehicles are matched we're using an RFID tag and at every stage and throughout the competition the whole week uh they're being scanned whether they belong to together whether they have had the safety checks the technical checks or whether the driver have been to the right briefings okay then we see here these very unassuming personal scales but that is very important because we have driver weight limits and we have lower driver weight limits so the minimum weight for a driver has to be 50 kilos in a prototype car okay and that is quite relevant because most cars only weigh 40 50 kilog so 10 kilos difference in a driver make quite a difference now is that Target normally hit and what happens if you're underneath that 50 kg yeah we've seen the drivers getting lighter and lighter and we didn't quite see like that trend of course drivers who weigh less can run still but they have to fit Ballas to the car okay and can they choose where to place that yes it is entirely up to the team where to mount the ballast as long as it's safe so what do we have here next here we are now getting to the fueling station for internal combustion engine cars at this station our inspectors check whether the fuel system is compliant okay the main purpose of the shell Eco Marathon rule is to check whether the cars are either safe or whether they are compliant in sense of fairness okay so we have inspectors here looking for little cavities or for little places where fuel could be hidden because the purpose of shelo marathon is to account for all the fuel that is being used so there must be no little bubbles there must be no little cavities and also you see here on this stand that all the fuels that competitors use we give a distinct color every year Now The Pump Fuel you get from your regular Shell station typically is not red or green or blue but this year you see for instance gasoline has been died red and the whole reason is that we want to see in each car that the competition approved fuel is being used and that competitors don't play with the fuels so what are the different types of fuels that we have out here in total this year competitors can choose from six different energies okay there are four liquid fuels gasoline and Diesel there is a biofuel ethanol ethanol 100 and there is GTL gas to liquid okay and then there are two electric drivetrains possible a battery electric car and a hydrogen fuel cell car okay and and all of those are they competing against each other or within their category yeah the concept of shell Eco marathon is that each energy has its own winner in its own right because we realize that the energy challenge that we're all facing will require multiple Solutions not a single bullet and so we want to give each fuel the same chance to to be developed to its Optimum okay and so the students choose and the students win in their own category so we have in the end six winners for six different energy types now do you have an idea of which of these energy types are usually the top most fuel efficient vehicles as I said yeah as I said we don't compare the fuels between each other um we are we simply achieve very high fuel efficiency at the moment with gasoline okay but that is also attributed partly to the fact that 40% of all competitors run on gasoline sure is going into it but then again um ethanol is also almost equally as efficient okay as gasoline because we also cross correct for energy density okay so because it's less energy dense it gets a basically a boosting in the so all numbers that all numbers that we produce for the fuels are energy corrected and and and normalized to one liter of gasoline equivalent okay all right so that's the Baseline one important Point probably to mention as well is the entire fuel system in these vehicles has to be transparent that means the fuel tank is from glass and all fuel lines must be translucent so we want to be able to see the colored fuel running from the tank up to the injector and that there is no other contributing energies to it sure that makes sense and so what is this test that we've got going on right now what you see here is the test that is most frequently failed by shell eom Marathon competitors is the brake test all cars are required to have two independent brake systems and they must work work independently and the test consists out of this 20% ramp on which the car must remain stationary when only one brake is applied and here we're seeing a good example of a of a car an unfortunate example of a car where one brake system is not sufficient to keep it stationary in its position what teams typically have to do is go back to their pedok readjust their brakes tighten them or drain the hydraulic fuel system or tighten the cables and come back to repeat that inspection so does it have to pass with both in independent brake systems both brake systems must be working independently okay and each one has to hold it on the grade correct okay and what percent grade is this 20% okay now on the other side of this grade what what testing do we have going on right here over there we see the scale so there are weight limits to the vehicles okay prototype and here we see an urban concept car Urban concept cars are not allowed to be heavier than 205 kg and this is simply um a weighing scale to determine how much this car weighs and this limit is in place for safety reasons if we have a collision outside on the track we want no car to be any heavier than another significantly in order to cause any any substantial crashes that makes sense what we see actually very often is that many uh students give their car a distinct design which not only that it looks visually attractive but also it creates attention it creates attention and sponsors are very very important yeah we were just checking out there's a DeLorean and then a Raiders of the Lost AR Bas car so after the weight check what are we moving on to next next is another very important safety check it's the seat belt text all cars have to be equipped with the propriety racing style seat belts Five Point seat belts with a single belt buckle so is this supplied by shell do you have to use the same one or is just any okay any proprietary can be bought in Motorsport C shops sure with five points and the way we tested is again a static test we will basically suspend the car and the driver on the belt buckle from this strain gauge up to a weight of 700 Newtons it must withhold 700 Newtons so basically roughly the driver's weight must be able to be pulled on so the strain gauge is now attached to the belt buckle okay so that was a pass that was a pass so it uh got all the way up to 75 kilos that is sufficient uh to get out on the track from the perspective of the safety belt okay so after safety belt what are we moving on to next the next stage is a simple Dimension check although I say simple the rules prescribe various up to I think 12 different dimensions that the car is to be within this is more or less for practicality and safety reason that no car is unduly large long and here we have a simple gauge which is helps the uh inspectors to quickly judge is the car uh higher than than it should be is it wider than it should be and what you see on the bottom indicates the track width so are these there's two different sizes here for the two different types of vehicles yes here this serves as a as a as a gauge for both the Prototype and the urban concept cars and uh obviously the uh inspectors look at it roughly now this car clearly is uh sufficiently low it's also not as wide as it should be if anything gets close to the measures then they will take um a gauge and measure accurately okay so moving on from the dimension inspection where are we going next now we're going to a special area where our electric vehicles are inspected okay and here we have several inspection Bays because the inspection of an electric vehicle takes a little longer because we have to inspect the entire circuitry from the battery over the fusing over the circuit breakers to the motor and also check for hidden contributing sources like hidden batteries okay and here we also inspect our hydrogen vehicles um and we do leak tests we do pressure tests so to check that the hydrogen system is uh compliant with our rules now is there a voltage limitation on the electrical systems yes the um shell Ecom Marathon limit for any voltage system is 60 volts 60 volts is there a size limitation on the batteries as far as kilowatt hours physical size there is none the nominal voltage must not be exceeding 48 volts okay and then it's as far as like the duration that it can the teams have to size their batteries in terms of capacity to manage the 10 laps that they are required to run which is about uh 6 per lap so 10 it has to be um 6 miles so they're given the flexibility to choose the battery size as far as as far as how long it's going to last based on their efficiencies they're even encouraged to build their own batteries if they wish to from single cells just to make them fit and ideally to be only as big as necessary for one successful run this pretty much concludes the actual inspection because the inspection in detail entails more than 100 checking points wow which are distributed over those eight stations and we have a computer-based system where the inspectors lock a pass or a fail on each of these 100 criteria and at the end the participants are given a notification what they have passed what they have failed then they can go back fit it and come back as often as necessary fix it and come back as often as necessary to have it rechecked and as soon as they have passed on criteria they get their race sticker and can go out on the track and compete so as soon as they pass they can go straight out um and then until they do pass they coming back as many times as it takes yes that's correct well thank you Norman for your help and taking us through this that was pretty cool thank you\n"