Muscat: Eight students from The German University of Technology are building an eco-friendly car to participate in the annual Shell eco-marathon.
The competition is scheduled to be held in March this year in Singapore and GU tech is taking part in the competition for the third consecutive year.
For the first time, GU tech team will consist of two female students in the team both of whom love cars.
“I love driving cars. I think it will be a very good experience said,” Arjawan Al Hajri, a 3rd year Process Engineering student.
The team has studied the cars of their Asian competitors in the previous challenges and came up with innovative ideas, such as automatic control programming for the car.
“The computer programme will increase the car’s performance. It will mainly focus on sensing and reporting car-related parameters to the driver,” said Prof. Dr. Nafaa Jabeur, Head of the Department of Computer Science at GUtech.
Commenting on GUtech team’s preparations for Shell Eco-marathon Asia 2017, Muna Al Shukaili, General Manager of External Relations at Shell Development Oman stated that they are pleased to have GUtech in the competition again. .
“We are very pleased to see that German University of Technology in Oman is set to compete in Shell Eco-marathon for the third time. I hope the competition will help develop students’ talents and make a contribution to sustainability in Oman. We are also very pleased to see that for the first time we have female students in the Omani teams participating in Shell Eco-marathon. I wish them all the best of luck as they arrive in Singapore in March for this challenge,” she said.
According to officials chassis of the vehicle is ready and bodywork will take another one month to build before the car is ready for shipment. The team has used lightweight materials like Aluminium and carbon fibre composites to keep the weight less.
“The car is very light it should be very fuel efficient,” said Mohammed Salman, the team leader of the GUtech team. A number of companies are sponsoring the team: Oman Air, Oman Cables and Europoles Middle East.