Vellore: Five final year M.Tech students of automotive electronics of the Vellore Institute of Technology have devised a parallel hybrid auto rickshaw, which runs both on an electric battery and petrol.
This comes at a time of rising fuel prices, the students having worked towards reducing the running cost of an auto rickshaw by Re 1 per km.
Givith Abraham, one of the students involved, says, “Estimating the number of auto rickshaws in India to be 25 lakhs, and their average running distance per day to be 100 km, this reduction in running cost could be considerably huge.”
The addition of an electric motor, powered by batteries and supporting circuitries, is the overall modification required to convert a normal auto rickshaw into a hybrid, which will cost Rs 45,000, a cost that they claim would drop if this is manufactured on a large scale. The amount could also be recovered within a year’s time if a normal drive cycle were 100 km per day, points out Givith.
Jerin Geogy George, also part of the team, explains how the cost drops due to the reduced use of fuel.
