DEVELOPMENT FUNDS: Aminar Rashid (centre) poses with the recipients of the development and marketing funds from various selected universities.
KUALA LUMPUR: The Perodua Eco-Challenge is back for the fifth year to test students from selected institutions of higher learning on their knowledge and skills in the field of automotive engineering and marketing.
“In conjunction with our 20th Anniversary this year, Perodua will be making the Eco-Challenge a bit more interesting with an increase of the total prize money by 23 per cent to RM127,000 from RM103,000 given last year,” Perodua president and CEO, Datuk Aminar Rashid Salleh said.
In this edition of the Perodua Eco-Challenge, a total of 10 institutions of higher learning have been selected to redesign a Perodua Myvi into a totally different look by December this year.
“To make things even more interesting, each team must have the Perodua name in their finished product; such as the Perodua Dreadnaught or the Perodua Flash,” he added.
The categories for this year’s challenge include “Long Distance”, “Engineering”, “Time Attack”, “Marketing Challenge” and “The Overall Champion” category.
A new category called “Styling” is added, whereby each team must make their car marketable in terms of the look and design.
The institutions which qualify for this year’s challenge are Universiti Selangor, Universiti Teknology Petronas, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Perlis
(NEW), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Politeknik Ungku Omar.
The Perodua Eco-Challenge challenges the students and even its lecturers to put their theories to the test in producing the most fuel efficient vehicle possible and Perodua have been steadily increasing the difficulty level to see how far the students could go.
“Last year we included a marketing challenge to give a glimpse of what it truly meant to work in an actual automotive company, whereby different disciplines must work together in order to produce a product,” Aminar said.
He added that Perodua is building on the knowledge and experience it has gathered over the 5 years since the challenge began to help the institutions in terms of guidance and support.
Overall, Perodua spent some RM6 million for the eco-challenge programme since 2009, an average of RM1.2 million per year – making this programme its largest annual CR activity.
The Perodua Eco-Challenge is endorsed and supported by the Ministry of Education.