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Shell Eco Marathons always attract a diverse mix of designs and technology and the Shell Eco marathon Asia is no exception.
While the vast majority of vehicles are gasoline powered there have been some notable exceptions such as Nanyang Technology University in Singapore who have brought a solar prototype vehicle.
For them the rainy season maybe an extra challenge.
We tend to rely on this weather and from the forecast we know it will be stormy in the afternoon so we try to get a window of bright sunshine to go out and do our attempts – that is the problem now.
Team 28 from the Pakistan Navy engineering college have another first for the Shell Eco marathon.
This car is built special because it is totally wi fi – a remote controlled car, in this car we have used high torque servo motors to control each and every thing – our turning is through this – our throttle is through this and our breaking is through this – so everything is through this joy stick – our driver is sitting inside just holding this, turning, throttling and brakes, everything he is doing is through this.
Meanwhile Malaysia University have a prototype LPG vehicle with an eco friendly shell.
Usually people are using fibre glass and carbon fibre and aluminium – so we wanted to do something different using natural fibre and the justification for using natural fibre is that if you want to use a glass fibre or carbon fibre you use a lot of energy to extract the mineral from the sand, (with fibre glass) but with Jute it is taken from a plant which doesn't emit any CO2 – it actually absorbs CO2.
What we see here at Sepang at the Shell Eco-marathon is that the minds are really fresh and some teams come with absolutely novel ideas, which we had never thought about when we were designing the rules and regulations – like the Pakistani team with the remote control car, this remote control car poses some problems regarding safety of steering, safety of breaking but if that can be overcome, this maybe an absolutely new and novel solution that many teams in Europe, given their history, may never think about.
So this maybe the first event in Asia but the competitors are already thinking outside the box – devising new technologies that might have long term effects on transport.