Engineering college bags second prize at Asia's electric solar vehicle meet

THANE: After working for over seven months designing and manufacturing a solar car, students of an engineering college have helped their college bag the second prize in Asia's electric solar vehicle championship 2019.
A P Shah Institute of Technology (APSIT) was amongst the 58 teams in 28 states that participated in the five-day competition. It was organised by the Imperial Society of Innovative Engineers (ISIE), Chandigarh. The team named Modified Auto Club had around 37 students from mechanical, Information Technology, Electronic & Telecommunication streams. "We took turns everyday to ensure that the vehicle was and we had adequate time to test it. This was the second year of our participation. Last year, we learnt that we had to focus on reducing the weight of the vehicle as it was around 400kg. We used polycarbonate sheets and reduced the weight to around 180kg. The car takes around six hours for solar charging. It has lithium batteries and can run on solar or batteries. The speed of the vehicle is around 35kmph to 50kmph," said Mithilesh Vekhande, vice-captain of the team.

The college bagged the first price in two categories - endurance and cross pad. They even broke the record in the second category as the previous contestants, who have participated in the last five editions of the competition had completed minimum by 62 seconds.

The vehicle also had a kill switch which could be used in an emergency. The switch is placed near the driver. The students said they will work towards probably having a car running in their campus.