SEM Asia 2011, the second staging of the annual fuel-efficient competition for students across Asia to be held in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, welcomes three new teams from Viet Nam: BK AUTO 07 from the HCM City University of Technology; ICE HUST from Ha Noi University of Technology and MECHANIC from the University of Communications and Transportation.

"Our team's goal is to beat Viet Nam's current (students') record of 252km per litre of fuel set in another competition here last year," said Nguyen Ngoc Trung, captain of BK AUTO 07, which has seven members who have spent five months to build their super efficient vehicle.

MECHANIC members were quite humble when asked about the fuel efficiency of their vehicle.

"We are not sure how far our vehicle can go per litre of fuel but we hope it runs as smoothly as it did in tests," said Ha Viet Bac, the team's leader.

Meanwhile, ICE HUST members said their confidence was boosted by the fact that they've had the experience of participating in a similar competition last year in Viet Nam.

Nguyen Viet Thanh, the team leader, said that they have learned from that competition ideas and ways to build a better vehicle this time.

"We cannot be sure of anything until it happens, but we hope our vehicle will run more than 250km on a litre of fuel," said Thanh.

The Shell Eco-marathon, which started in 1939 in Europe, challenges students to design, build and run the ultimate fuel-efficient vehicle.

The event came to America in 2007 and debuted in Asia last year without any team from Viet Nam.

France's Polytech' Nantes is the current global record holder with a fuel-efficiency of 4,896.1km per litre of fuel achieved at the 2010 Shell Eco-marathon Europe EuroSpeedway Lausitz. — VNS