IIT-Bombay rolls out India’s 1st electric racing car

A new set of hot wheels from India is set to enter the racing circuit. What’s more, it’s green. The IIT (Indian Institute of Technology)-Bombay Racing Team on Thursday launched at the institute the country’s first electric race car —Evo1 — designed and manufactured by its members.

The car, the first such creation at the student level, will be put to the test in the Formula Students competition at the famous Silverstone Circuit, UK, in July. The competition is a testing ground for the next generation of world-class engineers and it challenges university students from around the world to design and build a single-seat racing car.

Evo1 is powered by high-efficiency direct current motors and superior lithium polymer batteries. It has no tailpipe emissions, thus leaving a negligible carbon footprint. It also has a comprehensive data acquisition system, which collects and transmits data of important parameters of the car such as the amount of charge left in the battery and its temperature, motor current, number of revolutions per minute of the wheel and vehicle acceleration. Such a system is widely used during the testing stage to predict the ‘health’ of a car.

Created by a team of 60-IIT-B students from different disciplines of engineering, the race car costs Rs15 lakh — Rs3 lakh more than what a car with traditional motor engines and which offers similar efficiency would cost, said Prateek Sharma from the IIT-B Racing Team.

“The IIT-Bombay Racing team participated in Formula Student in 2008-2009 with an IC (internal combustion) engine powertrain. This time, it is an electric car. This shift in technology was primarily envisaged keeping in mind the global impetus received for electric vehicles owing to reasons of energy security and environmental concerns. India is many miles away from mass scale of commercialisation of electronic vehicles,” added Sharma.

Prof Rangan Bannerjee, dean of research and development at the institute who launched EVo1, said, “We are ready for initiatives which give students exposure to practical groundwork. People who are working on such projects can become innovators tomorrow, which will help us make a difference in society.”