O.A.U Student Builds Solar and Wind Powered Car from Scrap

What were you doing in your final year at University? Whatever it was, there’s a chance it wasn’t as awesome as what Segun Oyeyiola has spent his doing on the side while preparing for his final exams.
The final year Obafemi Awolowo University engineering student, has spent the better part of a year, retrofitting a VolksWagen Beetle to run on solar and wind energy at the same time.
According to him:

“I wanted to reduce carbon dioxide emission[s] going to our atmosphere that lead to climate change or global warming which has become a new reality, with deleterious effect: seasonal cycles are disrupted, as are ecosystems; and agriculture, water needs and supply, and food production are all adversely affected.” “Therefore, I came up of building a car that will use both winds and solar energy for its movement,” he continued. “This was my personal project because of the problem I’m planning to solve.”

His contraption is still a prototype and not suitable for everyday use yet (The battery requires about 4-5 hours to charge and is so heavy that he had to modify the suspensions to bear the weight of the battery) but it has already brought a new, possible solution to the major problem with electric cars–charging the battery. Solar powered electric cars aren’t new, but adding a wind-turbine to augment the solar charger when the car is in motion is something I personally haven’t come across as an idea before. It in theory, would make it possible to drive and charge at night when there is no sunlight.
Segun, who finishes his exams tomorrow, isn’t deterred by his main challenges which he states are finding the appropriate materials for his car, and people who tell him he is wasting his time building it and plans to keep improving the car till it is “Nigeria’s future car”