NIQR SRM Conference On Electric Mobility
NIQR Chennai Branch and SRM University, Vadapalani organised a one day National Conference NCEM2K18 on 22nd February 2018 at SRM University Vadapalani Campus. The theme of the Conference was “Electric Mobility – Opportunities and Challenges”.
The seeds for the conference were put from the inspiring speech by Mr. P. K. Aggarwal, NIQR National President during the LSN Guptha Memorial Lecture by Mr. Manikandan, Chairman NIQR Chennai Branch on ‘Electric Mobility’.
64 papers were received from 19 Institutions and they were scrutinised by Mr. C. V. Gowri Sankar, Secretary – NIQR Chennai Branch and Mr. N. Muthaiah, Senior Manager, Electric Vehicle Division, Ashok Leyland and 40 papers were selected for final presentation on the conference day.
The Chief Guest for the inaugural function was Mr. P. K. Aggarwal, Vice President – Corp. Quality, TAFE Ltd. During his inaugural address, he highlighted the importance of “Electric Mobility” and its future. He also highlighted the recent initiatives taken by the leading auto manufactures and their migration towards EVs. He projected the challenges for the end users if Electric Vehicles completely replace the IC Engine based cars. He congratulated and motivated the student community for showing interest in the field of Electric Vehicles.
Mr. K. Manikandan, Head – Sourcing Development, Ashok Leyland delivered an invited talk on the “Opportunities and Challenges” in automotive industries with the implementation of EVs. He took the audience in his stride with his presentation about the features of Tesla Electric Cars which had only 20 moving parts against 20,000 in an IC Engine based car; and the scope of using lubricant becomes virtually zero. He also did mention about the latest policy of Europe in stopping the new investment in IC engine based vehicles.
The main proceedings started with paper presentations in four halls. Dr. G. Saravanan, Facility Manager, Products Support and Logistics, Caterpillar India, Mr. A. Nandakumar, Divisional Manager, Sourcing and Supply Chain, Ashok Leyland, Mr. K. M. Veeramani, Deputy General Manager, Sourcing and Supply Chain, Ashok Leyland, Mr. N. Muthaiah, Senior Manager, Electric Vehicle Division, Ashok Leyland were the juries.
Top two teams from the 4 streams were selected for final presentations in the auditorium in front of a full house. The details about winning teams are given in a separate box.
Dr. Mani Karthik, Senior Scientist, Center for Nano Materials, ARCI – Hyderabad, delivered an invited talk during which he mentioned about the launch of Asia’s first super-capacitor powered Electric Buses in India and related research work carried out in Electric Vehicles at ARCI under Government of India missions.
Mr. S. Rajasekaran, National Vice President NIQR was the Chief Guest for the Valedictory Function. In his address to the audience, he encouraged the participants to come up with start-ups and become the entrepreneurs in the field of Electric Mobility as this could generate more opportunities in future.
The Chief Guest distributed the awards to the winning teams and also mementos to the students who have donned the curtain raiser.
Mr. N. Dinakar, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering proposed the vote of thanks.