The Perodua Eco-Challenge is back for the 5th 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% 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. “This year, the institutions not only have to make the car more fuel efficient, but they also have to improve on its design to suit the needs and lifestyle of the Malaysian public,” Aminar said.
“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 – for example,” he added. The categories for this year’s Perodua Eco-Challenge include “Long Distance”, “Engineering”, “Time Attack”, “Marketing Challenge” and “The Overall Champion” category. This year, we also included a new category called “Styling” because this will be a big part of the challenge, 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 was introduced with the aim of exposing students from local institutions of higher learning to a real-world working environment. It 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. On average, the compact car company spends RM1.2 million per year on the Perodua Eco-Challenge – making this programme its largest annual CR activity. The Perodua Eco-Challenge is also endorsed and supported by the Ministry of Education.
