Reva on a PET ride

BANGALORE: Reva, India’s electric car company, will soon be bringing out a software, which will enable the driver of the car to view different activities of the car and its overall health on a portable Palm Pilot. The software, called Portable Electronic Tool (PET) Soft and to be launched in four months time, will piggy-back on the car’s in built Energy Management System (EMS) and aid in better usage of the vehicle according to the company.

“We developed the EMS to help us monitor and service the car better. So far there was only a dealer version of PET Soft which is used by servicing personnel to get quickly to the root of any problem in Reva and therefore cut down on the time for problem resolution,” said MD of the company Chetan Kumaar Maini.

According to him, the user version of PET Soft will be different from the dealers, with more user friendly information like how long the car can travel on its present battery charge and advice on when to charge among others.

The EMS resides inside the car and consists of a hardware unit containing embedded solutions from Microchip, which collects data from the car and stores it. It also constantly monitors the vehicle and sets off an alarm when something goes wrong. All versions of PET Soft have been developed on the Palm OS to ensure that information can be collected on the move. Palm PDAs equipped with PET Soft via a port inside the car can access data from the EMS.

“The data is platform independent and can be uploaded into any Microsoft enabled desktop and collated using Excel spreadsheets. The EMS can store 32 KB of data or roughly 300 run cycles of summary data, each cycle being 80 kms,” informed Maini, who refers to Reva as ‘IT on four wheels’. He also envisions a time in the near future where PET Soft can be integrated into advanced devices, which will double as PDA and phone making it easier for consumers to assimilate in their lives.

While the dealer version of PET Soft costs close to Rs 2,500, Maini said that the user version, which will allow the owner to view the state of the car while restricting access to modification of data, will cost close to Rs 1,500. The company, which has sold 600 cars since its launch in 2001, plans to introduce the user PET Soft in India, test the market and then move it to its overseas markets.

CyberMedia News