Pune: The New Year opened on a cheerful note for students of College of Engineering, Pune, (CoEP) as they won the national championship prize for the first ever Hybrid Tricycle Competition, called Cross Trike at Indore organised by Blizzard Motor Sports from December 27 to 31.
The students designed an electric-cum-manually operated three-wheeler vehicle which can be driven by two drivers.
The vehicle, as the name suggests, is hybrid and is battery operated and at the same time can be pedalled by both or either of the drivers. It can speed up within 15 seconds after starting and run at a speed of 25 to 30 km/hr. It can accelerate up to 45 km/hr.
The competition was aimed at radically changing the way people travel within cities. While talking to Sakal Times faculty and mentor of Velociracers PR Dhamangaonkar said, “We won the first prize in designing as well as the championship. The competition was held in three phase of which in the first phase we had to submit the virtual design of the vehicle. The second round was Static in that we had to cross report about the vehicle. In the third round Dynamic, we had to tell about the acceleration.”
Dhamangaonkar said, “The main criterion was the endurance test in which the vehicle had to run for 1.15 minutes non-stop. We won this test and the overall competition. In all 35 engineering colleges including IITs and NIITs participated. As this was the first year of the competition, the number of participants were less. We had 14 members of various disciplines including mechanical, production, electrical, metallurgy, and all participated in it.”
Team leader and final year student Nitin Darade said, “We designed this vehicle keeping in mind the worsening situation of traffic in the cities. We also kept in mind the driver’s comfort, cost-effectiveness and long-lasting factors were kept in the mind.
Before the competition, we had our end semesters and the team got busy with studies and then the examination,” said Nitin. “After the examination, they were tired. At the same time we faced technical snags with the vehicle after we won the first prize at a competition held at Lovely University, Punjab in November. But then our seniors, teachers motivated us and we geared up for the competition,” Nitin said.
