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The public transport in India is gradually shifting towards electric mobility. Long range in electric mobility can be served with High Voltage Battery (HVB), but HVB can sustain for its designed life if it’s maintained within a specific operating temperature range. Appropriate battery thermal management through Battery Cooling System (BCS) is critical for vehicle range and battery durability This work focus on two aspects, BCS sizing and its coolant flow optimization in Electric bus. BCS modelling was done in 1D CAE software. The objective is to develop a model of BCS in virtual environment to replicate the physical testing. Electric bus contain numerous battery packs and a complex piping in its cooling system. BCS sizing simulation was performed to keep the battery packs in operating temperature range.

Automotive suspension system forms the basis for the design of vehicle with durability, reliability, dynamics and NVH requirements. The automotive suspension systems are exposed to dynamic and static loads which in turn demands the highest integrity and performance against fatigue based metallic degradation. The current focus in automotive industry is to reduce the weight of the automotive parts and components without compromising with its static and dynamic mechanical properties. This weight reduction imparts fuel efficiency with added advantages. High-Strength Low Alloy steel (HSLA) offers optimum combination of ductility, monotonic and cyclic mechanical properties. Furthermore, welding processes offer design flexibility to achieve robust and lightweight designs with high strength steels.

Nowadays, E- commerce and logistics business model is booming in India with road transport as a major mode of delivery system using containers. As competition in such business are on rise, different ways of improving profit margins are being continuously evolved. One such scenario is to look at reducing transportation cost while reducing fuel consumption. Traditionally, aero dynamics of commercial vehicles have never been in focus during their product development although literature shows major part of total fuel energy is consumed in overcoming aerodynamic drag at and above 60 kmph in case of large commercial vehicle. Hence improving vehicle exterior aerodynamic performance gives opportunity to reduce fuel consumption and thereby business profitability. Also byproduct of this improvement is reduced emissions and meeting regulatory requirements.

Environmental regulation, operating cost reduction and meeting stringent safety norms are the predominant challenges for the automotive sector today. Automotive OEMs are facing equally aggressive challenges to meet high fuel efficiency, superior performance, low cost and weight with enhanced durability and reliability. One of the key technologies which enable light weighting and cost optimization is the use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composite in automotive chassis systems. FRP composites have high specific strength, corrosion and fatigue resistance with additional advantage of complex near net shape manufacturing and tailor made properties. These advantages makes FRPs an ideal choice for replacing conventional steel chassis automotive components. However, FRP’s face challenges from operating environment, in particular temperature and moisture.

With increased awareness about environmental issues, the trend of automobile industry is to use ‘Recycled’ or ‘Biodegradable’ or ‘Energy Recoverable’ material. As a part of this programme, to make the vehicle ‘Green’ in nature, many automobile OEMs have taken the initiative to make use of natural fibre composite in their vehicles. Natural fibre based composite has been successfully proven for less critical as well as for semi-structural applications in an automobile. These typical applications are insulations, headlining, carpets, door pad etc. There is a demanding task for automotive OEMs to meet 85% Recyclability and 95% Recoverability targets by year 2015. To meet the RRR (Reuse, Recycle & Recover) and the ELV (End of Life) regulatory requirements, increased use of natural fibre based composite/ biopolymers is unavoidable. Natural fibre can offer potential advantages such as weight saving and improve overall green rating of the vehicle.

The entire commercial vehicle industry is moving towards weight reduction to leverage on the latest materials available to benefit in payload & fuel efficiency. General practice of weight reduction using high strength steel with reduced thickness in reference to Roark’s formula does not consider the stiffness & dent performance. While this helps to meet the targeted weight reduction keeping the stress levels within the acceptable limit, but with a penalty on stiffness & dent performance. The parameters of stiffener like thickness, section & pitching are very important while considering the Stiffness, bucking & dent performance of a dumper body. The Finite Element Model of subject dumper body has been studied in general particularly on impact of dent performance and is correlated with road load data to provide unique solution to the product. The impact of payload during loading of dumper is the major load case.

Basic Function: Vehicle remote is used for vehicle lock/unlock/search/Hazard lights /approach light functions for customer convenience and vehicle security system. Conventional approach: 1 Use of separate RF (Radio Frequency) receiver -Additional Cost impact. 2 High remote RF power - Reduced remote battery life and bigger remote size required 3 High sensitivity RF receiver - High cost. Low Cost approach: It involves the followings: 1 Integration of RF receiver inside the Body Control Module (BCM). 2 Low Power Remote and Optimization of Remote PCB layout to get the maximum power. 3 External wired antenna taken out from BCM and proper routine need be ensured to get the best performance. 4 BCM mounting location to get the best remote range in all vehicle directions. This paper relates to the methodology for low cost approach for the RF communication between remote transmitter and receiver with achieving the best remote performance at vehicle level condition.

Power-supply forms a key hardware block for every automotive ECU. Apart from delivering robust and reliable logic supply voltages it is also burdened with many auxiliary tasks like transient protection, good EMI/EMC performance, Power-hold function, Analog Sensor supply voltage etc. It also needs to meet all automotive norms including short to battery/ground etc. This paper discusses low cost implementation techniques which maximize the value delivered to the vehicle application at minimal cost. Innovative techniques are described for combining sensor and logic supplies wherever applicable. Hurdles faced during such circuit optimization are clearly explained along with the solutions adopted to overcome hurdles yet meeting automotive test norms. A novel low cost concept which combines transient protection as well as power-hold function (without using the conventional relay based technique) further adds value to the end application.

A hydraulic-assisted power steering system on a vehicle has a steering pump which is directly driven from the engine continuously. In real world, the assistance from the steering pump is useful only while maneuvering. During a typical highway drive, assistance from this power steering pump remains unused for majority (76%) of the time; although the continuously rotating power steering pump keeps consuming energy from the engine. An electronic controller has been provided for the electro-magnetic pairing device of the power steering pump in order to provide assistance for steering based on driver demand only. The electromagnetic pairing device integrated on the steering pump can be made to engage/disengage based on the driver demand through the electronic controller.

S.A.V.E. (SOLAR-ASSISTED VEHICLE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM) is a microcontroller-based closed loop system designed to optimize the duty cycle of alternator in conventional vehicle electrical system. This has been done by integrating a SOLAR PANEL on the rooftop of a popular hatchback. The SOLAR PANEL supplies continuous power to battery for charging thereby reducing alternator duty cycle. Consequently, in order to optimize/control alternator functioning based on demand, a microcontroller has been incorporated. S.A.V.E. consists of a microcontroller which senses the instantaneous electrical load (in terms of current & voltage drawn) from battery. The controller using the intelligent algorithm keeps on checking this real-time consumption with the threshold values & decides when to activate/deactivate alternator. Thus with this controller, a) reduction in actual CO₂ emission & consequent, and b) 6% improvement in vehicle fuel efficiency has been achieved.

Sustainable development is a very complex concept involving several inter-related issues and concerns. Globalization has given a new dimension to social, economic and environmental development associated with the perceived responsibilities and growth indicators. Both developing and developed countries have the opportunities to exploit comparative advantages in the changing economic, social and environmental scenario while targeting sustainable growth together with expansion of the business prospects. Every region perceives these opportunities with different notion. There is a plethora of indicators for assessing sustainability. However, assessment criteria, prioritization and trade off for a given sustainability parameter against the other could be very complex while evolving transport growth model in emerging economies.

Automotive Industry is constantly upgrading the value offered on their products at optimized cost. Scratch and mar resistance of interiors and exterior parts, is an important attribute which is linked to perceived quality and value offered to customers. Polypropylene material is optimum material of choice for these parts due to its unique advantages. However, filled polypropylene material has poor scratch and mar resistance. Many techniques for scratch resistance improvement are available such as additions of slip agents, co additives, special fillers, siloxanes, etc. However, some of them may offer some disadvantages like stickiness or tackiness on the surfaces. The choice depends on its effectiveness & cost. This paper deals with design of experiments to evaluate effectiveness of 4 types of additives and their optimum % to give scratch resistance improvement without having detrimental impact on other critical properties.

In today's scenario, most of the OEMs use manual transmissions with synchronizer gear shifting system for ease of gear shifting. It gives very high fuel efficiency. Gear shifting is a customer touch point, hence it is very important to select adequate synchronizer capacity so that it will perform in better and last longer. To test the synchronizers, there are many test methods which give the idea about life of synchronizer and its performance, in different conditions. Regular synchronizer rig tests consume lot of time in deriving the results. So it is very important to find out a way which will give same results within short time period. To carry out the short time test or accelerated test, we need to understand the effect of various factors like reflected inertia, drag torque, differential speed, synchronizing time, and gear shifting force on synchronizer capacity.

The authors of this technical paper conceptualize and illustrate a powertrain architecture for a hybrid electric vehicle coupled with a unique strategy to reduce a real life problem of driving in snail paced traffic. This architecture utilizes a relatively low powered hybrid electric prime mover that is generally used in mild hybrid vehicles, in an arrangement similar to a parallel hybrid system. Here, the electric machine is mounted on the input shaft of the gearbox and the clutch is actuated automatically through an Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) system. Therefore, it is possible to completely disengage the engine from the driveline and drive the vehicle independently through an appropriately sized electric prime mover. The high gear ratio between the drivetrain and the electric prime mover at lower gears can be leveraged to provide low velocity electric creep mode during which the vehicle can function as a pure Electric Vehicle (EV) while engine remains off.

Today’s competitive market demands for low cost passenger cars with lighter, smaller size, peppy response and fuel efficient engines and having world class NVH refinement levels. For such requirements, it is essential to optimize the product starting from the design conceptual stage, considering all performance aspects. Generally, three cylinder engines, due to less reciprocating masses, compared to four-cylinder engine, are said to be fuel efficient for the same capacity. Nevertheless, NVH problems caused by inherent imbalance forces and couples remain as drawback of the three-cylinder engine. However, through optimal design of the crank train, control of cylinder to cylinder pressure variation, stiffening of the engine structure, optimizing the integration with a vehicle through proper design of mounts, NVH refinement levels can be improved.

The fuel economy of heavy commercial vehicles can be significantly improved by reducing the rolling resistance of tires. To reduce the rolling resistance of 6×4 tractor, the super single tires instead of rear dual wheel tires are tried. Though the field trials showed a significant increase in fuel economy by using super single tires, it posed a concern of road safety when these tires blowout during operation. Physical testing of tire blowout on vehicle is very unsafe, time consuming and expensive. Hence, a full vehicle simulation of super single tire blowout is carried out. The mechanical properties of tires such as cornering stiffness, radial stiffness and rolling resistance changes during the tire blowout; this change is incorporated in simulation using series of events that apply different gains to these mechanical properties.

Regular vehicle has the advantage of Engine resistance even when it is not fired, hence chances of vehicle roll back on gradients will be minimized. This is not the case for Electric vehicles, which uses an electric motor that does not have any resistance offered to wheels that prevent vehicle roll back on gradient. This leads to increased load on the conventional hydraulic brakes due to absence of engine inertia. Hence, there is a need for a low cost and reliable automatic braking system which can help in holding the vehicle and assists the driver during launch in case he need to stop at a gradient. An Electromagnetic brake (EM brake) system can be used as a solution for the above-mentioned requirement. EM brake can provide hill hold and hill assist effect in addition to automatic parking brake application when the vehicle is turned-off. This system will assist anyone who need to halt the vehicle at a gradient and then relaunch it without much struggle.

Rising environmental concerns and depleting natural resources have resulted in faster adoption of green technologies. These technologies are pushed by the government of states through certain schemes and policies as to make the orbit shift ensuring greener environment in near future. Major actions can be easily seen in transportation sector. Hybrid Electric Vehicle (EV), EV and Fuel cell EV are being deployed on roads rapidly but even though some challenges are still unsolved such as battery cost, fast charging and life cycle of the automotive battery. Automotive batteries (Lithium ions) are declared as unfit for automotive usage after the loss of 20% to 15% of their initial capacity. Still 80% to 85% of battery capacity can be utilized in stationary applications other than automotive. Stationary application doesn’t demand high current density or energy density from the battery pack as of automotive requirements.

Aerodynamics performance evaluation of passenger cars is important during early vehicle development phase as it influences fuel economy, vehicle stability and drivability. Usually during initial styling phase, scale model is prepared and tested in wind tunnel to check aerodynamic performance like drag coefficient and these are used to predict aerodynamic performance of full scale model as testing on full scale model is costly and time consuming. To ensure its correctness, it is important to understand difference in physics from scale model to full scale model. In predicting full vehicle aerodynamics performance from scale model assessment; importance of Reynolds number, effect of geometric scaling on flow i.e. flow separation and wake zone change needs to be understood and addressed. This paper discusses about effect of scaling on aerodynamic flow behavior and drag.

In the recent years, Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (EVs) have gained attention globally due to conventional non-renewable fuels becoming expensive and increasing pollution levels in the environment. Li-ion battery EV’s are most popular because of their better power density, spe. energy density and thermal stability. With the advent of battery EV’s, concerns regarding thermal safety of vehicle and its occupants has grown among the prospective customers. Temperature plays an important role in the performance of the Li-ion battery which includes cell capacity, charge output, vehicle range, mechanical life of the battery etc. For Li-ion cells, optimum operating range should be between 15-35 °C [1], and all cells must also be maintained within a ±5 °C variation band. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation can be used to get better insight of cell temperature inside battery. But CFD simulation process is complex, time consuming involving multi-physics and exhaustive computations.