Vroom time: The 60kmpl car from NIT stable

Fuel prices burning a hole in your pocket?

Switch to a car that uses only a trickle of precious petrol to give an amazing mileage of 60km per litre (kmpl), students of National Institute of Technology (NIT) would suggest.

Team Revanta, a bunch of budding techies from the Adityapur cradle, has come up with a “super mileage” car, which will compete in the Shell Eco Marathon, scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur from July 4 to 7.

The team, which had designed a vehicle for last year’s SAE Supermileage Challenge that supposedly gave a jaw-dropping mileage of 130kmpl, will field its car in the urban category for the contest in Malaysia.

“Our initial idea was to design a three-wheel vehicle and take part in the prototype category, where the cars are not actually tested on road. However, soaring fuel prices made us reconsider our decision and we put in our names in the urban category,” said Saurabh Mishra, captain of Team Revanta.

“We simply took a 100cc bike engine that roughly gave a mileage of 60kmpl and modified it for our car,” Mishra said, explaining why, unlike last time, they did not focus on tweaking the engine powering the vehicle.

The petrol-driven single-seater, which will rub shoulders with the best on offer from engineering teams from across the globe in the Kuala Lumpur event, has been designed and fabricated completely by the team of eight students belonging to various streams — mechanical, electrical and production engineering.

The car, which is to be manufactured at Gamharia-based Bebbco Motors, will be developed with the option of upgrading it to a two-seater. The bike engine powering the vehicle will give the driver the option of revving up the vehicle to 65-70kmph on three gears.

The vehicle, which will be considerably light, too, at 110kg, has taken Rs 3.5lakh to build, with Tata Steel being the platinum sponsors of the team.

The team has tried to make the car as light as possible, so that it needs less power to move and ultimately save fuel. Therefore, the chassis has been made of a mixture of steel and aluminium.

“We have also paid attention to the safety of the driver and improved the steering mechanism. The car is ready to roar at the Shell Eco Marathon Asia next month. After the event, we plan to demonstrate it at various auto shows across the country,” Mishra said.

Future plans include its commercial production with which the team would like to stay involved. “But, we will need industry support for it,” he added.