Bangalore: August 6, 2008 - A petrol engine four-wheeler with a mileage of about 200 km per litre? The claim may sound incredulous, but that is precisely what a group of Bangalore college students have accomplished.

The students of the mechanical engineering department of Rashtriya Vidyalalya Colllege of Engineering have designed and built a super fuel-efficient car which they claim addresses issues such as oil crisis, environmental pollution and need for green technologies. This is their first step towards eventual participation in the SAE Supermileage International Competition in the US and Shell Eco-Marathon, in the UK. Akhila Thyli Hemanth chats with their team leader Nishant Sarawgi

A visibly excited Nishant Sarawgi, the team leader for project Garuda, the supermileage super fuel-efficient car, enthuses passionately on the Bangalore-based RVCE college Supermileage team's concentrated effort in creating a super mileage car that reduces emission, fights global warming and environmental pollution and addresses critical issues such as the oil crisis.

Working on this project for nearly two and a half years, with a social life that hit zero, the entire team devoted all its waking hours into this project. But Sarawgi asserts that the end result has been worth every moment of their efort.

A petrol engine four-wheeler with a mileage of about 200 km per litre? The claim may sound incredulous, but that is precisely what a group of Bangalore college students have accomplished.

What challenges did you and your team face while developing Garuda?

Things weren't smooth initially as we didn't have finances to make things happen, and there were limited resources. The college trust gave us our initial amount to start us off on our project. That was the starting point for us, and helped us to take things forward. As our project progressed we faced a lot of failures, but we count ourselves lucky to have faced them as we were rookies. This provided us with a learning curve.  Full Story