Pakistani students built an energy-efficient car to compete in Asia’s biggest Eco-Marathon

Team Envision representing PNEC-NUST built an energy efficient urban concept car, the Mile-X to compete in the upcoming Shell Eco-Marathon Asia 2019. This vehicle is one of the several, built by students who are representing seven different universities from across Pakistan. The team revealed their self-built car at a busy shopping mall in Karachi.

The Shell Eco-Marathon is an annual energy competition in which students from all over the world participate to design, build and drive their energy efficient vehicles. This year nine teams from seven universities of Pakistan will be taking part in this event. This event will be featuring 100 student teams from 21 countries from across Asia and the Middle East. The vehicles built for this event will be tested in two categories, Urban concept, and Prototype. The vehicle which will travel the farthest using the least amount of energy will succeed.

The students are not only required to build their vehicles for the event but they also have to secure funding to ship their cars to Malaysia where the event will be held this year and to cover all the expense of their stay during that time. Team Envision’s marketing head Taha Huda said that we started our campaign last year right after the previous Eco-marathon ended. He said it is a challenge to secure funds from the companies, many of them offer nothing other than their blessings.

Taha told Dawn News that; “We are not just looking to sponsors for money. We also welcome their services. For instance, there was BG Engineering which helped us build our chassis. Similarly, there is the Karsaz Education and Welfare Organisation that is sponsoring our travel”.

The team’s communication head Ukasha Kharbey said, that last year their urban concept was the runner-up for the technical innovation award. Meanwhile, another team from DHA Suffa University Karachi is taking part in this competition and is called Team DSU.

In 2017, students from GIKI university passed the inspection stage for their fuel-efficient car at SEM and the same team called “Team Urban” secured 7th position in the same event in 2016 as well.