FUT Minna students produce solar-powered car

STUDENTS of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State, have produced a solar-powered car.

According to the head of the department, an associate Professor, Ore Olugbode, who disclosed this recently during an interview at the departmental workshop of the institution, the solar-powered car was constructed by some 500 Level students as their final year project.

Associate Professor Olugbode, who was also the lead supervisor of the project, said that harnessing solar to powered a car will eliminate the problem of air pollution and other related problems caused by gas released into the air by cars, especially the destruction of ozone layer.

He further said that Nigeria has vast amount of solar power radiating from the sun, but the problem is inability to transform it into usable output to drive other mechanisms.

Olugbode said, “The solar power car came as a joke. We were at an exhibition sometime last year, during the mechanical engineering conference that took place in Abuja. Some of my undergraduate students were there, and part of what they presented was the idea of solar-powered car. At the conference, it looked like a joke, even though we knew that some of these things are in existence in developed countries.

“This solar-powered car is going to be the major thing that we will be exhibiting during the forthcoming convocation of this institution.”

He commended the students for giving their best to make sure that the project saw the light of the day.

A student, who was the project group leader, Mr Jimbo Johnson, also revealed that the challenge they had was finance, because they financed the project themselves.

Another student who took part in the project, Mr Joel Ibilola, urged government and corporate organizations to assist in financing such projects that could develop science and technology in Nigeria.

Eneje Anthony C, HND II, Mass Communcation, Federal Polytechnic, Bida.