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The automotive sector is going through a phase of stiff competition among various Original Equipment Manufacturers for increasing their profitability while ensuring highest levels of customer satisfaction. The biggest challenge for such companies lies in minimizing their overall cost involving investments in Research and Development, manufacturing, after sales service and warranty costs. Higher warranty costs not only affect the net profit but in turn it also affects the brand image of the company to a large extent in the long run. An effort is made here to target such warranty costs due to frequent tail pinion and hub seal leakages on single reduction/hub reduction axles of Heavy Commercial Vehicles in the field. A preliminary study involving the severity analysis of such failures is followed by a step by step investigation of these failures.

Globalization has intensively driven focus of car manufacturers on comfort and ergonomics. Luxuries are becoming essential features of product mix. Customer’s expectations and desires are changing because of cut throat competition and increasing variety of options. In order to sustain in marketplace, OEM has to be competitive while providing features and options with appropriate quality. Vigorously changing dimensions and definitions of comfort level, luxury and aesthetics has driven the intense focus of OEM’s on customer touch points, customer touch points are those components of vehicle which customer accesses while driving the vehicle and they play vital role in generating drive feel of vehicle. Customer’s drive feel about the vehicle is most complex and critical factor and is of subjective nature. Now days drive feel is an important aspect of product differentiation. Gear shift feel is very crucial touch point in overall drive feel of vehicle.

This paper is related to a vehicle with rear engine which is turbo charged and inter cooled. Due to packaging constraints the intercooler was placed in front of turbocharger and was exposed to hot air radiated out from the turbo charger. This was in turn reducing the efficiency of the intercooler. In such scenario, it is essential to shield the turbo charger from the intercooler for proper hot air management. Also rear engine vehicles don't have the benefit of ram air affect. This necessitates increasing the air entering in to the core of the intercooler. Both the above mentioned issues associated with such a vehicle was resolved by ensuring that the hot air from turbo-charge is guided away from the intercooler as well as the air flow to Intercooler is increased. Guiding or throwing out the hot air away from Intercooler was done by introducing a heat shield or a baffle between the two.

The vehicle pull (sideways) is a complex outcome of many parameters in an automobile vehicle. This is mainly due to steering, suspension, brake, wheels and chassis parameters. The road conditions like road camber also plays an important role in vehicle pull behavior. All efforts are put in design and manufacturing processes to maintain controlled vehicle pull in normal driving condition. Even though normal vehicle pull seems to be in acceptance limit (subjectively), its intensity increases many folds at the time of harsh braking. In these kind of panic situations where driver firmly holds on the steering wheel, it is expected that the vehicle should stop without deviating too much sideways from its intended straight line path to avoid any kinds of accidents. This work is an outcome of systematic study carried out to understand the root cause of brake pull as a field complaint on current production vehicles and adopting best possible solutions to minimize the brake pull.

Reckoning today's environmental rules, legislative regulation and market requirements- the automotive industry of late has witnessed an increased vigor and enthusiasm by auto makers towards electrification of vehicles across all platforms in a bid to improve fuel economy and performance. Hybridization of a vehicle often involves the use of expensive high performance motors and large battery packs. However due to the challenges associated with the packaging of bulky battery and motor systems in existing drive train, mild hybrid systems have been preferred over strong or full hybrids especially in current production models as they don't entail any major change in architecture and the reduced battery size, both of which provide for easier packaging of components.

The OEM's aim is to reduce development time and testing cost, hence the objective behind this work is to achieve a flexible stateflow model so that changes in the application during supply chain or development, on adding/deleting any switches, varying timer cycle, changing the logic for future advancements or else using the logic in different application, would end in minimal changes in the chart or in its states which would reflect least changes in the code. This research is about designing state machine architecture for chime/buzzer warning system and wiper/washer motor control system. The chime/buzzer stateflow chart includes various input switches like ignition, parking, seat belt buckle, driver door and speed accompanied with warning in the form of LED, lamp and buzzer. The logic is differentiated according to gentle and strong warning. Various conditions and scenarios of the vehicle and driver are considered for driver door and seat belt which is resolved in the chart.

In the automotive industry, multiple prototypes are used for vehicle development purposes. These prototypes are typically put through rigorous testing, both under accelerated and real world conditions, to ensure that all the problems related to design, manufacturing, process etc. are identified and solved before it reaches the hands of the customer. One of the challenges faced in testing, is the low repeatability of the real world tests. This may be predominantly due to changes in the test conditions over a period of time like road, traffic, climate etc. Estimating the repeatability of a real world test has been difficult due to the complex and multiple parameters that are usually involved in a vehicle level test and the time correlation between different runs of a real world test does not exist. In such a scenario, the popular and the well-known univariate correlation methods do not yield the best results.

Indian automotive market has grown extremely competitive in the recent past. In order to meet the ever growing expectations of the customers, automobile manufacturers are compelled to offer their products under superior quality with supreme comfort. Customers wish of high levels of tactile comfort in the cabin compartment and effortless operation of peripherals will result in negligible fatigue and a pleasant drive, needs to be duly fulfilled. One has to focus more on Gear shift lever and Steering wheel, which are being the most sensitive tactile points in an automobile. The gear shift lever knob is frequently used and significantly influences the perception of the shift comfort for a driver during actual vehicle application.