ABU STUDENTS CREATE ECO-FRIENDLY CARS

Students from the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria have manufactured two eco-friendly cars that were specially constructed for this year’s ‘Shell Eco Marathon Competition’. The locally-made cars named ABUCAR 1 and ABUCAR 2 were displayed on the university’s campus.

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’.

“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.

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.