Alberta students EcoCar team takes first at Shell Eco-marathon

A St. Albert student cruised to a first place finish at an eco-marathon last week despite storms, floods, and tornadoes.

St. Albert University of Alberta student Stella Simpson and the rest of the U of A’s EcoCar team took first place in the prototype hydrogen fuel cell event at the 2025 Shell Eco-marathon, which took place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from April 2-6. The Eco-marathon is an international engineering competition that challenges high school and university students to build the most energy-efficient vehicles.

The EcoCar team fielded a new hydrogen-fuelled vehicle called “Sally” for this year’s event. Simpson helped build it and served as the team’s social media and outreach lead, taking hundreds of pictures of the race while on site.

Tornado storm

The Eco-marathon sees teams try to drive four laps around the speedway’s P-shaped track within 35 minutes, using the least energy possible, said Essiyah Weis, a driver with the U of A EcoCar team. About a dozen cars are on the track at any time, most puttering along at about 30 km/h.

The biggest challenge at this year’s race was the weather, the EcoCar team said — specifically, the tornadoes.

About 21 tornadoes swept through Indiana on the night of April 2, toppling trees and destroying buildings statewide, the U.S. National Weather Service reports. One of them came within 20 km of downtown Indianapolis. Hail, floods, and extreme winds were reported throughout the city.

Weis said she and her teammates were woken up in the middle of the night to evacuate to a safer location during the storm. Simpson said the storm triggered flash floods and destroyed her neighbour’s patio.

“My Uber driver the next day showed me a picture of [the tornado] touching down near her house,” Simpson said.

“It was a little scary, but in retrospect kind of cool.”

The storm soaked the racetrack, which was a problem, as most of the competing cars were not waterproof. Simpson said the EcoCar team slapped a foam splash guard onto their car’s back wheel and taped a bunch of plastic bags over sensitive components to compensate.

Temperatures of 2-4 C made many cars on the track about 30 per cent less efficient, Simpson said. Rains and high winds sometimes made racing impossible. She said she was relieved when the team managed to finish its first valid run despite the conditions.

Winners

Simpson said just two of the five teams which entered this year’s prototype hydrogen race actually finished the event — the others were disqualified, failed inspection, or broke down on the track.

The U of A team took first place with an overall score of about 213 km/cubic metre of hydrogen, winning a trophy and $3,000.

Simpson said she enjoyed seeing the excitement and passion at the Eco-marathon, and learned much about sustainability from technical talks that happened during it.

Simpson said the EcoCar team will start work on next year’s Eco-marathon once they finished final exams. The team will also speak about this year’s race at the Canadian Hydrogen Convention this April 22-24.

Weis said Sally the EcoCar (which is currently being shipped back to Edmonton) will definitely be back for next year’s race.

“This car has a lot of potential.”

Visit www.ualberta-ecocar.ca for more on the EcoCar project.