Team UNIBEN wins international award for vehicle innovation

Students of Faculty of Engineering, University of Benin, called Team UNIBEN, broke grounds in an international competition - Shell Eco Marathon in Europe and South Africa in Oct. 2014 and won a distinguishing award for 'most innovative vehicle design' throughout Africa with its made in Nigeria car called Eco Cruise.

Shell Eco Marathon is a global competition that challenges students to build, test and drive fuel efficient vehicles. In other words, all the cars built are set to race and the vehicle that goes the farthest on the least amount of fuel automatically wins.

Team UNIBEN has previously also broken a record when they attended the Shell eco-marathon Europe in may 2014 with its first made in Nigeria car Tuke Tuke, making it the first team from Sub Saharan Africa to participate in the Shell eco-marathon. These two cars were handmade by these students alone in the workshop.

Tuke Tuke has innovative features like automatic windscreen wiper, button actuated gears, fingerprint access, ankara interior and fibreglass body. Both cars won all 10 technical and safety inspections, which I might add, are world standard, that qualified them to race on the track.

They are currently taking yet another challenge to build two cars that will participate in another shell eco-marathon in the Netherlands next year.

Students involved include: Osas Omijie, Festus ibidapo, adekola adeyemi, abdulmalik tajland, Daniel kwoka, justice Oyemike, emmanuel Ajari, eloghosa iyamu, James itoro, Jennifer orji, Anne monye, Michael olukoya,and Victor adegboye, 13 students in total supervised by Professor Akii Ibhadode (Winner, NLNG Award for Science, 2010).