SAE Discontinues Supermileage Competition after 42 Years
Working with incredible partners, such as the Eaton Corporation and Briggs & Stratton, today SAE announces the decision to discontinue the SAE Supermileage program after the 2022 competition season.
The competition originated in 1980 as a partnership between SAE International and Eaton Corporation and has been hosted annually at the Eaton Proving Grounds in Marshall, Michigan. In addition to SAE’s partnership with Eaton, Briggs & Stratton also partnered with the student competition by providing student teams with a Briggs & Stratton engine. The program was designed to offer university students an avenue to enhance their engineering design and project management skills with a real-world challenge focused on fuel economy. The engineering design goal for the competition since its inception has been focused on developing and constructing a single-person, fuel efficient vehicle capable of achieving high mileage per a single gallon. The highest record set at competition was achieved by Universite Laval in 2017 with 4,113 miles. For its 42 years of operation, the competition has focused on combustion engine technology.
As today’s industry focus shifts more towards battery-electric and autonomy, so has SAE’s business focus resulting in less programming and funding for traditional technologies where no growth is expected. SAE has made the tough decision to sunset the Supermileage competition after the 2022 competition season. The change allows resources to shift focus into developing new program offerings.
The 2022 competition will be the last year SAE Supermileage is hosted by SAE International. Aware that some student teams use this program as their senior design project, SAE wanted to ensure all teams received ample notification of this decision as students prepare this spring for their 2023 projects.
Though SAE will no longer be organizing the Supermileage competition, for any student teams who still wish to compete in a fuel-efficient vehicle challenge we gladly promote the Shell Eco-Marathon which offers a similar class to SAE Supermileage and is hosted on three continents.
Thank you to the many students, volunteers, and sponsors who have supported SAE Supermileage over the years. A special “Thank you” to Eaton Corporation and Briggs & Stratton for the 40+ years of partnership.
