Students of RV College of Engineering, Bangalore recently unveiled the prototype of India’s first plug-in hybrid car for city roads. The project code named ‘Chimera’ is the brainchild of 11 engineering students and is being supported by companies such as REVA, National Instruments and Robert Bosch.

It is based on the development of an energy efficient Hybrid Electric Vehicle based on the REVA platform. It is among very few prototypes that uses both electric energy and bio-diesel, thereby maintaining an eco-friendly tag. It has the feature of on-board charging, is fitted with a 440cc diesel engine sourced from Lombardini India and houses a hybrid controller.

National Instruments (NI) supported this project with software, hardware and technical training for design/testing. NI LabVIEW acts as the brain of the car. It was used to create the user interface on which the driver can monitor conditions of the car such as temperature, battery voltage, rpm, etc, thus acting like an in-vehicle data acquisition system.

The students plan to make the above automated system a standalone one by moving it onto NI CompactRIO which is an intelligent embedded data acquisition and control system. Robert Bosch also provided technical and monetary aid for the project.

Jayaram Pillai, Managing Director for India, Russia & Arabia, NI said: “It is these kinds of university-industry projects that facilitate Experiential Learning, i.e. learning by doing, among today’s engineering students. This is a concept that is pioneered by National Instruments and is proven to be the best approach to provide quality education. It helps bridge the gap between industry requirements and university learning, thereby taking the country on the path to a bright future.”

Source: CIOL