Students build rally monster for Dakar 2009
30 May 2008
Students of the Hogeschool Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN) in the East of the Netherlands are building a unique rally car, to take part in the world famous Dakar rally in January 2009.
Goal
The goal is to construct a vehicle that will run on pure vegetable oil. Eight-times Dutch rally champion Jan de Winkel should cross the finish line with this car, fully CO2 neutral, in January 2009, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The 30th edition of Le Dakar will be held in South America.
Cooperation
The project is the result of a cooperation between HAN-Automotive and five other initiators, joined together in Go-4 Dakar B.V. In addition, many businesses participate as internship companies, or suppliers of knowledge, techniques or physical parts. The project is also financially supported by a RAAK-funding of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
Automotive students, Mechanical Engineering students and Industrial Product Design students work together in teams on sub-projects at specialized companies in the region. Every team is responsible for a part of the construction.
Innovative
The Dakar vehicle is far from standard. It has to meet extreme requirements and this calls for many adjustments and new solutions. The innovative aspect is what motivates the partner companies to gladly participate in Go-4 Dakar. In the first phase of the project, companies work together to build the car, the second phase of the project focuses entirely on measuring and analysing data to increase knowledge and to encourage cooperation.
‘Green’
The environment and sustainability are at the core of the Go-4 Dakar project. The car will run green on Jatropha oil that is produced from seeds of a plant that grows well on poor soil, where hardly anything else grows.
The Jatropha seeds, from which the oil is extracted, are not part of the food chain and can be cultivated locally. Various global initiatives to promote the cultivation of Jatropha offer the population of dry third world countries an opportunity to supply a growing need for green fuel.