Bangalore's Ashwa Racing Workshop Shines In US

Ashwa Racing Workshop, the student wing of Bangalore's R.V. College of Engineering, which specialises in developing breakthrough technology in the automotive sector, finished second in Design and Project Management events and 4th overall out of 28 teams in the prestigious Formula Hybrid event which is run by the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth in the US.

The Formula Hybrid Competition is an interdisciplinary design and engineering challenge for undergraduate and graduate university students to build a formula-style electric or plug-in hybrid race-car and compete in a series of events. It took 10 months and a sum of $25000 for the students to build the car.

"We are happy with it's performance at this years Formula Hybrid event. This will encourage more teams from India to be part of such events thus helping showcase Indian Talent on an international platform," said the team members of Ashwa Racing Workshop.

The team received various awards and cash prizes, including awards for technical and managerial excellence.

With the use of many lightweight materials like aerospace-grade aluminum, the Bangalore team's designs exhibited high strength to weight ratio.

RZ-X6H is a series hybrid prototype which is powered by both the motor, Agni-95R and Pulsar 220cc bike engine. The prototype weighs 318 kg with a space framed chassis and uses a Lithium ion battery with custom BMS (Battery Management System).

It has a torsen differential and has rear actuated pedal assembly. Suspension system has unequal A-arms with ZF dampers.

Teams from USA, Canada, Turkey, Sweden, Russia, Taiwan, Spain and India have participated since the inception of the event. This year, 3 teams from India participated.

Asked about their new plans, the team said: "Once we master the art of building hybrid vehicles, Ashwa Racing wishes to diversify into Electrical and Driver-less category. We also plan to explore avenues which could help solve mass transportation problems, where race car technology could be exploited to achieve cheap and extremely fast, environmental friendly means such as driver-less pods and hyper-loops."