“Don’t find fault, find a remedy” – Henry Ford
Vivek Chaturvedi, Ekta Singh, John Lazarock, Gautam Peri, Andrej Simon, Fractal works and Mateen Bhai are working on a new automobile design with Aadivaahan, an electric vehicle that is attempting to break the world record for the longest range in a single charge (Non-solar category ).
Currently, University of Applied Sciences, Offenburg team out of Germany holds the record for the longest distance so far. Since 1998 the team from the University has been attempting the feat and it currently stands at an impressive 1,103 miles (1,631.5 km) set on Bosch test track in August 2011.
Vivek says “Aadivaahan has proven us in the prototype concept stage that the record is well within our reach, achievable in this calendar year, 2016”.
The team has a mix of people from various backgrounds contributing to it’s making. Founder Vivek, a design enthusiast who has worked on various design related project for close to 10 years is also a musician and social comentator.
Ekta, an engineer by degree, has a keen interest in bringing people together and creating a buzz about Aadivaahan since it’s beginnings. She has been instrumental in organizing and executing fundraisers, awareness campaigns for the project. John Lazarock, their In-house designer who Vivek met 10 years ago collaborates with him now for this project, bringing in his expertise from designing futuristic cars at General Motors, he contributes to Aadivaahan.
Gautam Peri, the electronics expert whose forte is embedded systems. Andrej Simon, or known as the “Battery doctor” whose battery innovation allows the vehicle to travel longer distances. Vivek finally met Mateen Bhai, a master fabricator who is also an intuitive designer to form the core team.
“There is something fundamentally wrong with our vehicle design. The way technology has evolved, the design hasn’t changed in all the years. Aadhivaahan is about making the world sit up and take notice the much needed design update to our automotive products” tells Vivek.
This view formed the foundation of Aadivaahan’s design principles. Their intention is to cross 1631 Km (which is the current record) on a single charge. The ideal system that they want to design would travel that distance with 150+ kgs load.
Their present challenges are improving the designs without affecting the performance, battery performance and load size among other things. Vivek feels that getting anything made related to hardware in India is extremely challenging.
He hopes to start an affordable kit-based package where one can get a kit and assemble it themselves or get a professional bike mechanic to do it for them. Mostly in the simple Do-it-yourself model, where students or any enthusiast who wishes to get a kit, can deploy it in no time. He feels that this will bring down the costs and transportation constraints. The vehicle is being built out of a garage in Kacharakanahalli, Bangalore city, India.
They are seeking funding of $77,000 (51Lakh INR) on the crowd-funding platform Ketto.
You can support Team Aadivaahan’s crowd-funding campaign on https://www.ketto.org/aadivaahan ,
