BANGALORE, INDIA: The R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore has unveiled Garuda, its super fuel efficient car!

With the aim to represent their College and country in international events like SAE Supermileage and the Shell Eco-Marathons, a group of enthusiastic and like-minded students comprising of Team Leader Nishant Sarawgi, and members Kayaan, Darshan, Bharat, Jacob, Krishna, Gautham and Rakshit from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore developed a shared vision to build a super fuel efficient car!

The outcome is “PROJECT GARUDA- RVCE SUPERMILEAGE CAR” which gives an amazing mileage of  about 200 km/litre and is slated to give a mindboggling 500 km/litre in due course.

Congratulations to the R.V. College of Engineering, and to Nishant Sarawgi and his great team!



The product of an untiring effort by the group of students “GARUDA RVCE SUPERMILEAGE CAR” was unveiled last Saturday (August 2, 2008) at the RV College of Engineering, Bangalore, by Dilip Chhabria of DC fame, an internationally renowned authority on car designs.

After having evaluated the features of the car and understanding from the students the specific design details, Chhabria expressed his great sense of confidence and appreciation of the design and technological capability of students in achieving this fantastic mileage.

Nishant Sarawgi, Team Leader, says: "The project not only gave us  a chance to implement the concepts that we have learned in theory, but also helped each one  of us in unleashing the inner potential to innovate and find implementable solutions to practical problems.

"The fusion of theory and practice has proved to be invaluable in reinforcing knowledge while also enabling us to think out of the box. The many innovative solutions that emerged during the whole process led us to sharpen our application skills. One very core objective which guided the process was also to help create awareness of the burning environmental issues like global warming, oil crisis and the need for green technologies and conservation of energy.”

The next steps, as Bharat, a team member explained is to improve the existing design and enhance the fuel efficiency to above 500 km/lit, and participate in the international competitions like SAE Supermileage-USA, Shell Eco Marathon-UK etc. next year.

The team was congratulated by Dr. SC Sharma, Principal of RVCE, for being among the first Indian teams to design and develop a super fuel-efficient vehicle. Dr. M.K. Panduranga Shetty, President of the Rashtreeya Sikshana Samithi Trust, promised all support in the years to come in all such endeavours.

Key features of the prototype include: HONDA GK 100 97 cc, 2 Hp air cooled engine; TAV 2 Torq_A-Verter and asymmetric CVT transmission systems; Tubular A1 6063 T6 chassis; use of glass fibre for the shell; Bontrager, 16-inch Moulton sizes recumbent wheels; Twin tie road steering system; Inteneidate freewheel design; variable jet carburetor and simple caliper cycle brakes.

The fuel efficiency of the car was tested on the NICE corridor and under test conditions has demonstrated a mileage of 180 km/litre.

Sarawgi expressed his deep sense of gratritude to Tantra Infosolutions (Total Outsource Group), CD Adapco and Chameleon Motors, who willingly came forward to sponsor this initiative. Tantra Infosolutions provided strong engineering and financial support to the team. CD Adapco chipped in with the critical engineering design software and Chameleon Motors provided infrastructural support during the building of the car. Bimal Auto Agency provided logistics support and Innoversant Solutions provided strong support in project management, marketing and PR.

I am awaiting some further inputs from Nishant, and will be adding those here over the next couple of days.