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Heard about a five-wheeled car that does 45-50 km per litre with a price in the range of Rs 55,000 to 60,000?
The National Innovation Foundation (NIF) set up by the
Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, is
currently supporting two innovators from a small town in Rajasthan who
have developed the five-wheeled car for commercialising their efforts
for building a low-cost car.
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With the Tata group already gearing up to launch the Rs 1 lakh car
Nano, the car developed by the two innovators is being projected by NIF
as the one suited not just for the city rides but also for transfer of
passengers from the airport terminals to the aircraft in the various
airports of the country. "The car has been designed by Harimohan Saini, 21 and his
cousin Harimohan Saini, 18 who are neither too economically sound nor
are highly educated and belong to a small town called Weir in
Rajasthan," said Dr Vipin Kumar, National Coordinator - Value Addition,
Research and Development, NIF. He further said, "Our workers working in various rural areas
found out these two boys and their innovation." He further said, "Once
the workers in the town told us about it, we did its prior art search
and found out that there are toy cars that has five wheel but this
car's mechanism is quite different, also there is no car used for a
commercial purpose has that such mechanism and so we immediately got it
patented on the names of these two boys."
"The fifth wheel is in the centre on rear axle and the power
from the engine is directly transferred to the fifth central wheel
while other four wheels are free," said Vipin Kumar, "This reduces
power loss and eliminates the differential on driving axle." He said,
"The car is not more than four feet wide so that it could travel
alongside other vehicles moving in narrow 10-12 feet wide roads of
rural roads and unlike other cars that needs to move a bit to take
turn, this car can take a turn standing at the same spot."
Alok Gora, an engineer working with NIF said, "The car has used
a spare engine of a moped as the engine of the car and used scrap and
easily available material to develop the rest of their machine which
made the car ready and running." The wheels of the car are also from
the scooter, "The current model of the car does not have gears and
further the innovators plan to use more powerful, bike engine and
incorporate a gearbox in it." The speed of the car is 60 to 70 km per
hour. "Once we got the model, NIF had send it to BVB Engineering
& Technological College, Hubli, Karnataka where the students
verified it, and added the value addition to the model and gave its
current form," said Kumar, "But this is not the final look, we are
going to send it to either IIT or other scientific institutes and
organisations for its final value addition before we commercialise it."
He further said, "Once the final product is ready, we will approach
various prospective entrepreneurs who would have interest."
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"Once the final car is ready, it will be a great help especially in
big industries as it does not require much space and the workers can
easily travel from one place to another", said Prof Anil Gupta, IIM
Ahmedabad who is the Executive Vice Chairperson of NIF. "It can also be
used for multiple utilities like fun rides in amusement parks to
lugging agriculture goods and people in rural areas, etc".
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