Fueling The Future: Support Bruin Supermileage!

Bruin Supermileage is a sustainability-focused engineering organization founded in 2004. As one of the Bruin Racing teams, we are at the forefront of the engineering clubs on campus, striving to live up to our motto of “sustainable engineering, efficient racing.” Our overall mission is to develop young engineers with the hands-on skills needed to excel in industry or research, in addition to developing a cutting-edge vehicle for competition in the Shell Eco-Marathon. Many of our engineers join top engineering companies like Apple, SpaceX, Tesla, Rivian, Meta, and more!

Our members design and manufacture a hyper-efficient vehicle from scratch all in the cycle of one year. Unlike most other university teams in North America, which operate on a two-year design cycle, we are one of the only teams that design and manufacture our entire car in a single year – pushing the boundaries of our engineering capabilities and perseverance. This vehicle, weighing over 300 lbs, is the combined effort of over 14 subteams, each with a unique scope of work, and over 100+ people. Throughout the year, we host many subteam workshops/events to help improve our design and eventual manufacturing of our vehicle. Our biggest event is our competition in Indianapolis, where we will make the long trek to participate Shell Eco-Marathon, going against other like-minded organizations at universities across the United States

Historically, we were founded on the vision of developing an internal combustion vehicle that achieves the maximum miles per gallon possible. Our award-winning team has in the past achieved 1,239.5 mpg. In 2016, we added the development of an Electric Vehicle to add to our focus on sustainability. We have gotten a best finish of 3rd place at 27.92 miles per kWh. Other awards include a second-place finish in the Design and Innovation Category for our state-of-the-art chassis design and a first-place finish in the Data & Telemetry Award for our vehicle performance modelling and expansive data visualization, all done in-house by our electrical team. In 2023, we switched our focus from building traditional internal combustion and all-electric vehicles to building a Hydrogen-powered EV vehicle, a first at UCLA! 

This past year, we have been able to develop a working prototype of an in-house Hydrogen Fuel Cell, in order to improve our kWh/m³ power-to-hydrogen consumption for future years. In addition to our continued development of a revolutionary in-house Hydrogen Fuel Cell, we look forward to developing other intricate technologies for this year, such as developing a solar panel array plus battery energy storage system to further support our sustainable vehicle performance and manufacturing. 

In addition to representing the Samueli School of Engineering at events such as Engineering Welcome Day and EAF, we actively promote sustainability and clean technology across campus and beyond. From spreading awareness of renewable fuels and sustainable product development at numerous on-campus events such as the Earth Day Extravaganza to SustainaBruin to representing UCLA on a nationwide stage at Sustain Socal, we have made it our mission to prove to the public that renewable technologies are possible and are being developed. 

Every donation means the world to us! By donating to Bruin Supermileage, you will help make our trek to Indianapolis possible this year. If you have any questions, please please please reach out and our financial leads would be more than happy to answer any questions, or show you a million pictures of our team, if you'd like! Thank you so much for your consideration!

CLICK HERE TO READ THE UCLA FOUNDATION'S DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS FOR DONORS

Should this fund reach the campus minimum required for the establishment of an endowment or quasi-endowment, The UCLA Foundation reserves the right to convert this fund to an endowment or quasi-endowment. Please click here to learn more about how the UCLA Foundation invests and manages its endowments.