A litre of fuel, no more than that. How far can you go on just one litre of fuel? That’s the burning question in Rotterdam today during preparations for the Shell Eco-marathon. It’s being held in the Netherlands for the first time.

The actual contest isn’t taking place until May but the teams are in the Dutch city to be told about the course and the requirements with which their vehicles will have to comply.

During the eco-marathon, students from all over Europe will attempt to travel the furthest on one litre of fuel in all kinds of home-made vehicles. The Dutch contestants are from universities, further education colleges and secondary schools. Some of the international teams will field new vehicles, others will use the same ‘energy-efficient monsters’ as last year – which have been further fine-tuned in the interim.

It has to be pointed out that they will actually only use a fraction of that precious litre of fuel during the race. To use up the whole litre, their vehicles would run for a very long time and Rotterdam would be closed to traffic for too long. No, the contestants – going at about the speed of a bicycle – will complete several circuits of a course through the city. Afterwards, their performances will be used to work out how far they would have gone on a whole litre.

Last year’s winning team in the petrol (gasoline) category came from France. They managed 3,688.2 kilometres on one litre of Euro 95. The record – 3836 kilometres - was set in 2005.

Take a look at some of the vehicles from past races:

(mw/rk)