Bandar Seri Begawan - Five teams will be representing Brunei in this year's Shell Eco-marathon Asia expected to be held at the Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from July 4 to 7.

The country's participation in the event is supported by Brunei Shell Petroleum with collaboration with the Ministry of Education through the Department of Technical Education and Universiti Brunei Darussalam. This will be Brunei's third year participating in the Asia leg of the unique competition.

Three vehicles were sent during Brunei's first participation in 2011 and it increased to five vehicles with the participation of Universiti Brunei Darussalam.

According to a press release, this year's five teams comprises of students from Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), Mechanic Training Centre (PLM) and Sultan Bolkiah Vocational School (SVSB) have all completed and passed the technical submissions prior to this.

Close to 300 teams from all over the Asian region registered and only 150 teams were shortlisted after assessing technical submission. All five of Brunei's team submission were approved in the assessment.

Shell Eco-marathon is a unique competition that challenges students to design, build and drive a vehicle that can travel the furthest distance on the least amount of fuel. The competition is part of Shell's Mobility campaign in finding more innovative ways and developing more energy-efficient fuels and lubricants and helping to reduce CO2 emissions.

Brunei's team will be participating in two categories - Urban Concept and Prototype.

Universiti Brunei Darussalam will be taking part for the second time after first joining last year's event. UBD are putting forward a newly designed vehicle which is powered by battery.

Sultan Bolkiah Vocational School is represented by team "BRUDA-Mech" and "Automaxx" both in the Urban Concept category For SVSB, this year will be the first time that one of their vehicles will be using diesel fuel. They will also be designing a battery powered vehicle for their second team.

Mechanic Training Centre will be represented by team "Alpha 2" and "Alpha 4" for the Prototype and Urban Concept categories respectively. Besides a battery powered vehicle, PLM is using a different fuel this year which is Fatty Acid Methyl Ester (FAME) fuel compared to petrol used in their last two outings. Both PLM and SVSB are participating for the third time.

The competition itself is a good platform for the students to expose their engineering skills and knowledge at the global stage.

The Bruneian record was built by the PLM students that ran for a distant of 142km, which is equivalent to driving all the way from Muara to Seria, on just one litre of unleaded fuel or about 50 cents worth of fuel.

--Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin