Nepalese students have succeeded in creating low-energy long-distance electric vehicles. The vehicle was built by a group of 12 students studying mechanical engineering at the Thapathali campus to participate in an international level competition.
The team will represent Nepal in the Shell Eco Marathon, a world-class competition to be held next September. Royal Dutch Shell has been organizing a world class Shell Eco Marathon every year to reduce energy crisis, increase environmental pollution etc.
Due to the Covid 19 pandemic, the competition which has been going online for the last few years will be organized in September this year.
Team Shirato Team Leader Saugata Pandey said, “Due to the corona pandemic, we have participated online in 2020.
The winner of the competition will be the group that can build a long-distance vehicle with less energy. The car named “Tim Shirato” is named after the match.
The vehicle is powered by a three wheeler with a lithium-ion battery and a 250W brushless DC motor. The main purpose of making it smaller is to reduce its weight as much as possible.
As a result, students are expected to cover even greater distances. It is designed to be used for sleeping. Pandey said it was designed in a prototype model keeping in mind the competition.
The competition consists of a prototype model and an urban concept. The ‘urban concept’ specifically refers to the four wheelers that we see on the road.
“Right now we are focusing more on prototype models, but we plan to focus on urban-model vehicle design in the 2023 competition,” Pandey said.
In the current test phase, the vehicle consumes one unit of battery to cover a distance of 100 km. By increasing this distance, Tim Shirato is active with the goal of covering a distance of 150 km per unit of battery consumption.
It took him about a year to complete this work. Completed at a cost of more than Rs.
The motor controller and some other spare parts involved were developed by the students themselves while the battery and motor were imported from outside. In the future, the team is confident that if the motor controller can be produced in large quantities, it can export it outside the country and earn income.
In addition, the skilled manpower required to manufacture electric vehicles is being produced. So that in the future electric vehicles manufactured in Nepal can be exported to other countries.
At present, the amount to be spent on this has been provided by the campus and Golchha organization in the form of cooperation. Despite focusing on prototypes due to immediate budget constraints, Team Shirato aims to build an urban model vehicle with a collection of Rs 25 lakh.
Nepali student going to world competition made 1 unit electric 100 km electric car