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Horsepower vs. Torque for the BUV

When talking about engines and power, we’re often asked about the difference between horsepower and torque. What do they do, and what do they have to offer in terms of an engine?

The best way to describe think about it is that torque is what throws you back in the seat when you step on the accelerator, and horsepower is what keeps you pinned there.

Loaded down BUV

You may not go very fast loaded down this much, but you’ll be able to move it.

For the Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) that travels over unfinished roads it needs more torque to push the vehicle through the rough roads in Africa, where most vehicles are located, with brute force. Torque is the power that gets you up steep hills, over large rocks, and through big holes in the road. Horsepower keeps you moving down the road, but torque is what powers you over the obstacles.

The BUV has both the torque and the horsepower to make it over the rough roads in Africa and makes it an affordable and efficient vehicle. We’ve found the right combination of the two to make this a useful means of transportation over any terrain.

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2014 IAT BUV Student Competition Results

120x90-vehicle2.jpgThank you for a safe and exciting BUV Competition. Thanks also to Tuff Torq Corporation and Yanmar Corporation for sponsoring the event!

Scoring: There were a few slight score corrections from the point totals announced. The only change that affected team rankings Trine’s score on Spec Check which caused Trine and UC Club to switched positions. Trine received a “0” for Spec Check by mistake. The scorekeeper did not see or possibly receive the sheet and gave Trine a 0.  In reality, they received a 3.3 for the event which put their total score at 72.95. My apologies for not catching this error ahead of time.

Special congratulations to the winners:

  • 1st Place: Calera
  • 2nd Place: Purdue University
  • 3rd Place: Trine University
  • Customer Choice Award: Alfred State College (selected by JAARS – a leader in mission logistics and technology)
  • Most Innovative Feature: Purdue University for their belt transmission
  • Best Free Style Design University of Cincinnati – Club 1
  • Enduro Event Winner: Calera

Thank you to the teams donating their vehicles:

  • Northern Illinois University: Kenya
  • Union University: Kenya or Haiti
  • Purdue University: Cameroon, Africa

PR: Teams are encouraged to notify their university Public Relations department ASAP. They will assist you in submitting an article to your local newspaper. Please email me your favorite 3 photos and favorite video clip from the competition.

 

Employment: If you are interested in an internship, please send us your resume.

Thank you also for keeping safety a priority.

 

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The Entrepreneur’s Vehicle

In the last blog, I mentioned that one of the ways BUVs were helpful in Cameroon was by providing men with good, paying jobs.  One of the other helpful attributes of the BUV is that the BUV allows families to haul more crops to the market.  The market in Cameroon only happens on Tuesdays and Saturdays.  The market in Haiti, around the Port-au-Prince area where I was in May of 2010, happens on a similar week day and then on Saturday.  These are the only two days that farmers/entrepreneurs can sell their crops or goods.  Therefore not only does the BUV provide more jobs in the community, it also helps farmers/sellers get their crops to the market on the only two days a week that they can sell their goods.  In fact, around 40% of the goods grown are lost from not being able to sell them due to the lack of means of transportation.  As mentioned before, most people do not want to take a taxi to the market because that essentially takes away some money from the small amount of money they will earn that day.

One of the biggest hassles for our team was traveling, not because of the lack of transportation but because of the severity of the unpaved roads and the distance between everything.  The big market near the village that we lived in is in Bangang, which was about an hour away by foot with very little on your back.  Therefore it is somewhat unrealistic to just bring some of the goods to the market and yet it is also unrealistic to bring everything.  A seller never wants to run out but they also never want to have to carry a bunch of their own goods home along with any other purchases they made; it is all about a balance.  While how much to bring is a guessing game every week, it could become less of a hit-or-miss experience with the help of the BUV.  Not only could several farmers bring their goods to the market all at one time, they could also always go back for more if they run out; whereas now people will just pack up when they run out.  This could drastically change how much money some families are surviving on, allowing kids to get a good education and stay in school.

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Purdue’s Cameroon Trip 2011

As a member of the Purdue BUV team, I was able to go to Cameroon in May.  We had spent the past year designing a new BUV that we then took to Cameroon.  We spent 3 weeks building our design from scratch and seeing how it would impacts lives there.  There were about 12 of us on the team including the Professor.  One of the most noticeable culture differences was the fact that it was the women that worked all day not the men, even though it is a male-dominated culture.  We were in a small rural farming town, and quickly found out that harvesting and working in the fields is considered to be women’s work.  Therefore in that specific town, the women would work in the fields all day and carry all of the crops to the market on the market days.  Because this is considered women and children’s work but driving is considered men’s work, the women walk to the market.  Very rarely did the women take a cab because their families have so little money to begin with.

Since pretty much all of the work in the area is considered to be women’s work, there are a lot of men that do not contribute to the families income at all.  Therefore one of the ways that the BUV can be helpful in a community like this one, is that it would put the men to work.  The men would be able to come alongside the women to help contribute money to their family by driving the BUV and would therefore not be spending all day at the bar.  This is just one of the many ways that a BUV can change the lives of entire villages with very little impact by outside countries or even outside villages.

 

The IAT summer intern

Melissa Cole

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Maternal Mortality, Africa, and Transportation

According to multiple surveys, newspaper articles, and books, maternal mortality in Africa hinders economic and societal development in many countries. Let’s look at what the World Bank says in its recent report on the issue.

African Woman and ChildThere’s a relationship between mobility, power and well being. The differences between male and female travel patterns and the cultural rules and roles associated with these differences are under charted in the policy environment. The impact of constrained mobility on bargaining also has its impact on what comes to be available as resource and service within local constraints. And as a conclusion, the authors of the report suggest several solutions for the challenge:

  • Specific transport and maternal mortality projects (safe motherhood transport plans – Malawi, transport within safe motherhood unions – Zegoua, Mali, targeted approaches which integrate transport – Senegal and Mali, using the existing fleet of vehicles: the yellow flag initiative in West Africa);
  • Mobile maternal health clinics;
  • Roadside wellness centers: the intersection of health needs, and so on.

But as we all know, due to the lack of financial resources in Africa some of these solutions might not materialize in the nearest future, unfortunately… Yet I dare to offer a viable low-cost solution to the challenge of maternal mortality in Africa. One Basic Utility Vehicle (BUV) can serve both as an ambulance and as a means to deliver life-saving medicine and equipment to a distant village where locals are not blessed with a health clinic or a health care professional. For just a few thousand US dollars we could start saving lives today – not to wait until a road or heath care infrastructure is built. Just a thought…

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