Made In Nigeria: ABU Students Create Eco-Friendly Cars!

Students of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria at the weekend unveiled two cars that were constructed as an environment friendly specially for this year’s ‘Shell Eco Marathon Competition’.

According to the Head of Mechanical Engineering Department, Dr. Mohammed Dauda, they started to manufacture the cars as Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited invited the ABU to participate in what they call ‘Shell Eco Marathon Competition’.

Mechanical Engineering department of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in Zaria have manufactured an eco-friendly energy efficient car

“The car should be one that consumes little fuel but goes long distances. This competition is held in America, Europe and Asia and we are participating in the European one in Netherlands in May this year. All materials used for this car were sourced locally,” Dr. Dauda said.
The locally-made cars named ABUCAR 1 and ABUCAR 2 were displayed on the university’s campus.

An eco-friendly energy efficient car, ABUCAR

Dr. Dauda, who doubles as the Dean, Faculty of Engineering, also said that, though, there are things that they did not fabricate themselves, everybody would be surprised that some of the components like the electrical, they just looked at an old computer system and then adopted some of the components that were useful. “So, this is one example of what we did, which is recycling, otherwise, I will say 100 per cent of the things we used were produced here in Zaria,” he added.
Last year, students from the University Of Lagos (UNILAG) as well as from the University of Benin (UNIBEN) have also built their own versions of energy-efficient car for the international Shell Eco-marathon. This marathon challenges student teams from around the world to design, build and test ultra-energy efficient vehicles.

UNILAG Car

Uniben students introduce Tuke-Tuke car

Moreover, in October 2014, the University of Benin (UNIBEN) team won the international award in prestigious nomination “Most innovative vehicle design” for the car called ‘Ecocruise’.

UNIBEN Team and Ecocruise