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The success of the Eco-Vehicle Programme and future steps

12 June 2024 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Sonia Small

Eco Vehicle Race 2024 — This year's Eco-Vehicle Skills Programme saw remarkable participation. A total of 148 students completed the programme successfully.

For the past seven years, the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Kovsie ACT has proudly hosted the successful Eco-Vehicle Race. This event has grown into a major highlight, thanks to the significant support from MerSETA (Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services), which has enabled the development of a comprehensive skills programme focused on sustainable energy and eco-vehicle technology.

In 2020, MerSETA's funding allowed Kovsie ACT to create a detailed skills initiative culminating in the exciting 2021 eco-vehicle race. Over nine months, 150 students received extensive training in eco-vehicle technology. This programme provided students with both theoretical knowledge and practical experience, preparing them not only for the competition but also for real-world applications of sustainable energy solutions.

Dr WP Wahl, Director of Student Life, emphasises the value of this initiative, saying, “This effort provides students with a set of skills that will help position them in the labour market. They are equipped with basic knowledge and abilities in sustainable energy, enabling them not only to compete in the eco-vehicle race but also to comprehend the inner workings of the vehicle.”

CUT Team 4: Overall winner of Kovsie ACT’s Eco-Vehicle Race 2024

According to Teddy Sibiya from the Kovsie ACT office, this year's Eco-Vehicle Skills Programme saw remarkable participation and achievements. A total of 148 students - 118 from the UFS and 30 from the Central University of Technology (CUT) - completed the programme successfully. Additionally, 10 engineering mediators completed the Mediated Learning Experience course, providing mentorship essential to the students.

In the 2024 Kovsie ACT Eco-Vehicle Race, CUT Team 4 emerged as the overall winner. Kovsie Q secured second place and East College took third place. North College won the Spirit Cup and was announced as the pitstop winner alongside East College.

In the Obstacle Race, which tested teams' control over their cars through various challenges, CUT Team 4 claimed the winning title. They also came in first place in the Endurance Race, where the objective was to complete as many laps as possible using the least amount of energy in 45 minutes.

The race took place at the UFS’s Bloemfontein Campus on Akademie Avenue, next to the George du Toit Administration Building, with spectators watching from the Red Square parking area.

Eco-Vehicle Sustainable Skills Programme 2.0 introduced

Sibiya announced the next phase of the journey - the Eco-Vehicle Sustainable Skills Programme 2.0. “With continued support from MerSETA, we have expanded our partnerships to include Nelson Mandela University and will continue to involve students from the Central University of Technology.”

“In the next phase, the focus is on developing a new eco-vehicle prototype and creating an advanced skills programme around it,” adds Sibiya. “We aim to debut and race this new eco-vehicle by 2025, continuing our commitment to innovation and sustainable energy education.”

Dr Wahl elaborates, “Students will be taught the same skills, but the learning experience will be deepened. The skills programme consists of five cycles. In cycle one, the students build a race car on a small scale that includes a charging station and a small solar panel. In cycle two, students learn to programme the small-scale racing car from their cell phones or laptops. In cycles three and four, they build the larger race cars with battery packs and solar panels. All of these come together in cycle five during the Eco-Vehicle race when the energy conservation of the cars is tested.

Support from sponsors

Several sponsors were involved in this year’s Eco-Vehicle Race. OFS Fire supported the race with equipment and certified training for all the participating students. Several of the teams also secured sponsorships: East College from Deluxe Grills, South Campus from SA Truck Bodies, West College from Mpeki Tsh Trading and Project, and the CUT Teams from the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE). Haval also exhibited a car at the event.

News Archive

Code-switching, tokenism and consumerism in print advertising

2014-10-27

Code-switching, linguistic tokenism and modern consumerism in contemporary South African print advertising. This is the current research focus of two lecturers from the Faculty of the Humanities at the UFS, Prof Angelique van Niekerk and Dr Thinus Conradie.

The act of switching between two or more languages is replete with socio-cultural meaning, and can be deployed to advance numerous communicative strategies, including attempts at signalling cultural familiarity and group affiliation (Chung 2006).

For advertising purposes, Fairclough’s (1989) seminal work on the ideological functions of language remark on the usefulness of code-switching as a means of fostering an advertiser-audience relationship that is conducive to persuasion. In advertising, code-switching is a valuable means with which a brand may be invested with a range of positive associations. In English-dominated media, these associations derive from pre-existing connotations that target audiences already hold for a particular (non-English) language. Where exclusivity and taste, for example, are associated with a particular European language (such as French), advertising may use this languages to invest the advertised brand with a sense of exclusivity and taste.

In addition, empirical experiments with sample audiences (in the field of consumer research) suggest that switching from English to the first language of the target audience, is liable to yield positive results in terms of purchase intentions (Bishop and Peterson 2011). This effect is enhanced under the influence of modern consumerism, in which consumption is linked to the performance of identity and ‘[b]rands are more than just products; they are statements of affiliation and belonging’ (Ngwenya 2011, 2; cf. Nuttall 2004; Jones 2013).

In South African print magazines, where the hegemony of English remains largely uncontested, incorporating components of indigenous languages and Afrikaans may similarly be exploited for commercial ends. Our analysis suggests that the most prevalent form of code-switching from English to indigenous South African languages represents what we have coded as linguistic tokenism. That is, in comparison with the more expansive use of both Afrikaans and foreign languages (such as French), code-switching is used in a more limited manner, and mainly to presuppose community and solidarity with first-language speakers of indigenous languages. In cases of English-to-Afrikaans code-switching, our findings echo the trends observed for languages such as French and German. That is, the language is exploited for pre-existing associations. However, in contrast with French (often associated with prestige) and German (often associated with technical precision), Afrikaans is used to invoke cultural stereotypes, notably a self-satirical celebration of Afrikaner backwardness and/or lack of refinement that is often interpolated with hyper-masculinity.

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