Every year, students from Skoda design and build a student car. This time, following the three successful design studies from recent years, the students decided on an electric buggy that bears the name Skoda Element.
With great dedication, the students spent approximate 1500 hours working on the open beach buggy. This demonstrates the young engineers’ enthusiasm. Building their own vehicle isn’t just fascinating for the students at Skoda, it is also good advertising for the brand, the Skoda Vocational School (which has an enrolment of 900) and a good incentive for the country’s best young engineers.
The 2017 student car project began in autumn 2016 with initial drawings of a model. Since January 2017, the highly motivated young people from various vocational courses have been working on the car not only on paper and at their computers, but more and more also at the work bench, with welding equipment and tin snips.
The roof had to be removed, the entire sides have been redesigned, the boot was fitted with a lid. Manufacturing the individual body components was the most complicated part. However, with each task, the students’ skills grew. They learnt to work as a team, practised their technical and organisational skills, and experienced what it means to have to manage with a set budget. The development work was part of their formal lessons.
The 21 trainee engineers, between the ages of 17 and 18, come from nine different professional fields – among them body painters, body makers, car electricians, motor mechanics and logistics specialists.
The Element, an electrically powered buggy based on the Citigo, stands as yet another testament to the skills of the young people at the Skoda Academy. The lateszt student car is a roadworthy beach buggy featuring a solar panel, smart TV, cool box and mobile disco. 
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