Day 2 (10th October, 2014):

We presented our vehicle before the Safety Check team and they made sure that we made the necessary changes and marked our vehicle as Safety Check cleared.

It was followed by the inspection of our Electric drive. Now it was my responsibility to accompany the vehicle as I was supposed to answer the questions raised. They asked about the motor’s rating, battery rating and all. I was asked to produce the Data Spec sheet of the motor and they ensured that our motor, battery was within the said ratings by a multimeter. The drivers were asked to give a full throttle and they measured the current rating. Without much difficulty, we got cleared in that event too..!



We then hurried up for the Brake Test. We were asked to accelerate to the maximum along a 100m straight track and were supposed to brake within a 5m distance. Now this too was very difficult for since the weight of our vehicle was over 300kg.  Accelerating and stopping within the 5m was far too challenging (inertia!). The drivers pedaled to their maximum and stopped pedaling so that we could bring our vehicle to rest within the said limits!! However, the judges didn’t approve us of our cunning minds..! :p We were asked for a re-run and this time we came at maximum speed and were able to stop well within the given time limits and the Brake OK sticker and Tech OK sticker and were qualified to attend the Dynamic events.

We had to go through a lot of rounds to get qualified for the Final race. We then proceeded for the Design 1 round. Design in-charge Sasikumar accompanied the vehicle and Captain Nizamudheen for the design 1 rounds. The judges asked to justify our selection of the materials and various other components. Mr. Jitendra Malhotra (R&D Head, Maruti Suzuki) happened to come across our vehicle and gave his comments on our design.  He took time to review our design and innovations and gave his valuable suggestions on how to optimize our design.

Mr. Jitendra Malhotra (R&D Head, Maruti Suzuki) inspecting the vehicle

The next round was a Weight check round. There weren’t any marks deduction for this round. A “Lightest” vehicle award was given to the team whose cycle weighed the least. We literally prayed that their weighing scale shouldn’t break weighing our extra rugged vehicle..! :D