Pakistani students create device to increase fuel efficiency

New innovation will improve performance of hybrid and electric cars by over 60%

KUALA LUMPUR: A Pakistani engineering university has qualified for an international innovation award as its students have created a device to increase fuel efficiency by over 60% in hybrid and electric cars.

“A…hybrid car can go around 40 kilometres in one full charge of the battery. Our innovation, which keeps the battery charging (without consuming power) during the drive, can increase the journey to about 65 kilometres in one full charge,” National University of Science and Technology’s final-year engineering student Muhammad Ali told The Express Tribune at Shell Eco-marathon Asia 2019. They have named the device ‘Wheizo’. It is a set of four strips and each of them carries some 150 piezoelectric transducers. They are fitted inside the car wheels.

The transducers generate electricity when they get pressed, he said.



China and Japan have first used transducers below floor tiles and when people walk on the tiles-fitted floors they produce electricity. However, the amount of electricity they used to produce through the walk remained nominal.

“This is for the first time we are experiencing such a high amount of electricity using piezoelectric transducers,” he said. “We are among the top three contenders in the competition for the Shell Eco-marathon innovation award worth $3,000. We have already qualified for the award,” he said.

Over 100 teams of students belonging to dozens of engineering universities from 18 countries across the Asian region are participating in the marathon titled “Make the Future Live Malaysia 2019”. These teams include eight from three Pakistani universities.

Students have brought their prototype and urban concept cars in order to participate in a car racing competition. It is not a must that the driver who crosses the winning line on the racing track first would be the top winner. The drivers who would win the race would be the ones who use less fuel in the given stipulated time.

The innovation award is one of the few off-the-car-racing-track awards at the marathon. The car racing competition would take place on the second day of the event (Tuesday).

Second Pakistani innovation

A team of students from Air University of Islamabad said they had developed an energy consumption monitoring meter called ‘Joule Meter’.

“It helps tell drivers how to efficiently use the fuel in electric cars,” third-year student Talha Nasir Ahmad said. The meter is available in the market. However, “we have made it at almost one-third of the cost at which they are available in the markets.”

“This year, Shell Eco-marathon has returned to Malaysia to celebrate a decade of competition between Asian universities,” said Shell Malaysia Chairman Iain Lo while speaking at the inaugural ceremony. 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 30^th, 2019.

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