By Conan Businge

A PROTOTYPE car designed by Makerere University students is being exhibited at the World Design Capital in Torino, Italy.

The environmentally-friendly and energy efficient prototype was part of last year’s Dream Exposition designs at the workshop room at Torino Museum.

The first model of the vehicle, Vision 200, was partly designed by six Makerere undergraduate engineering students. While building the car in Italy, the students handled the ‘heart’ of the vehicle.

“We handled the transmission and power-train, which are the basics for the vehicle’s movement,” said Steven Ntambi, who headed the students team.

This involves data networking, battery and the protection system and welding on the body of the vehicle.

Since Makerere University did not have enough money to build a general transportation research centre, Massachusetts Institute of Technology of the USA took over the building of the vehicle.

Last year, the Design Summit invited 55 students studying different disciplines from 21 universities in 11 countries to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop commuter cars.
Makerere represented Africa.

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