Cleaner Asia by Dutch tuktuks
Eco Tuk is a Research and Development company founded almostthree years ago by students from HAN University of Applied Sciencein the Netherlands, has created an eco-friendly rickshaw. Togetherwith charity foundation DOEN! they started a pilot in Sri Lanka. Inits capital Colombo a range of their ‘Eco Tuks’ have been given aradical and green make-over.
Viable and eco-friendly
The students in automotive engineering started their greenvehicle career by winning the international competition envisionedby Stef van Dongen, director of Enviu, a Netherlands basedenvironment think-tank. After one too many rides in the heavilysmoking, environmental polluting three wheelers, he hoped thatthere was someone in the world who could design a commerciallyviable and eco-friendly solution to transform these pollutingmonsters into clean green wheels.
Luckily for him, and the rest of the world, someone did. Byintegrating just one device the creators of Eco Tuk have alteredthe once polluting rickshaw into a vehicle that runs on the moreeco-friendly LPG. By adding a so called Liquified LPG InjectionSystem on the existing highly pollluting carburetted petrol engine,the combustion will become much more efficient and leave almost noresidue). The LPG conversion kit, reduces the fuel costs ofauto-rickshaws up to 50%, and CO2 pollution by approximately40%.
Over 100 million clients?
Since the contest the engineers have been busy making theeco-friendly rickshaw Eco Tuk a success. And the project hascertainly not gone unnoticed. The project now has a promisingfuture, and the Eco Tuk could become a huge environmentalsuccess. This inspired Steve Wozniak and the jury for the WozzieAward to give the Eco Tuk team their innovation-incentive
The numbers are staggering. Some five million rickshaws aredriving around in India and taking into account all the other Asiancountries, the number of vehicles fit for Eco Tuk technologyexceeds 100 million! Even if ‘just’ one million of them adopt theEco Tuk kits, there would be a huge impact on the environment. Ifthe Eco Tuks prove to be a success, DOEN and local partner AllianceFinance Company intend to roll out a production line together withEco Tuk. This would make the neceassary mass production apossibility.
Frank Schouten, business developer at Eco Tuk: “Eco Tukdeveloped this retrofit conversion technology to already make thedifference in the near future with an immediate implementabletechnology. For the long term Eco Tuk has the vision ofcreating fossil fuel independent mobility solutions.”
