During day one of the competition, the French squad, dubbed "Team PolyJule," and their hydrogen-powered prototype destroyed the previous record of the equivalent of 3,836 kilometers on a single liter of fuel, set by ETH Zurich of Switzerland in 2005. They did it by posting a whopping 4,414 kilometers on that same volume. Even more amazing is that the next day, they once again shattered their own 1-day-old record, adding 482 kilometers to the range to top out at the equivalent of 4,896 km per liter -- in other words, the equivalent of 11,516 miles to the gallon.

Let's look at those numbers again, shall we? The fuel-efficiency equivalent of eleven thousand and freaking five hundred sixteen miles. On one gallon of fuel. You can traverse Europe north-to-south in that distance, from the North Cape in Norway to the toe of the Italian boot.

Amazingly, Team PolyJule thinks it can do even better than that -- though it, like the rest of us, will have to wait until next year to see what it can come up with.