CEC sponsors University of Zambia students’ maiden participation in the Shell Eco-Marathon

Zambia is for the first time participating in the Shell Eco-Marathon, a competition that challenges student teams from around the world to design, build and drive the most energy-efficient cars.

CEC has fully sponsored the University of Zambia’s (UNZA) Students’ Research Group to build a prototype energy efficient car named the Defender.

Owen Silavwe, CEC’s Managing Director, describes CEC’s support of Zambia’s participation in the competition as motivation to inspire Zambian engineers of the future to turn their vision of sustainable mobility into reality.

The Zambian team, called Team Alec, is required for their type of participation to make as many attempts as possible to travel the farthest on an electric drive train. Entrants can also compete to achieve the same objective on 1 litre of fuel.

The competition is split into two categories. The Prototype class focuses on maximum efficiency, while passenger comfort takes a back seat. The Urban Concept class encourages more practical designs.

Team Alec has entered the Prototype class in the 2017 Shell Eco-Marathon 2017 Challenger Event South Africa.

Teams from South Africa, Zambia, Nigeria and others take to the track to battle for ultimate energy efficiency from 20 October 2017.

The competition dates back to 1939 when Shell Oil Company employees made a friendly bet over who could travel furthest on the same amount of fuel. Since then it has expanded globally and includes many energy types and motivates debate around the future of energy and mobility.

The competition is hosted by the School of Electrical Engineering from the University of Johannesburg and takes place at the Zwartkops Racetrack in Pretoria from 20 – 22 October.

http://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/shell-ecomarathon/challenger-events/south-africa.html

The CEC sponsored #teamaleczambia can be followed on Twitter this weekend by the same hashtag, #shellecomarathon and #cecinnovation.