I have added the entire Project  document in Pdf format… completed on 22nd feb 2009

Car share concept- Project document  => 35MB (file size)

Project guides:

Dr. Soumitri Varadarajan (RMIT) , Praveen Nahar (NID)

The final model pics

finished in January 2009

It was cnc machined in melbourne and painted in India

Thanks to RMIT and NID

For the new user profile…”kshitish”- a Post graduate transportation design student from NID… he’s  now at RMIT under the student exchange program . i’ve tried to put in the graphics worked upon by Kshitish  on to the vehicle and how he would like to identify himself with the car share vehicle….

Find out more about kshitish from his blog

here…I’ve tried to work on integrating the graphics on the car….

I’ve picked up a user profile- ” Isobel” … In the day she works at help desk for the industrial design dept at RMIT and by night she’s an artist. so if she were to use the car share car to go to work of for shopping or to attend a party, she’ll just upload her paintings on the lcd skin of the car….. and her paintings become a deynamic master piece. this kind of customizing graphics can be done at home from ur own computer and can be accessed from the car share vehicle for display! …its all about trying to bring people more interested in the carshare system.

i’ll have to get an approval from Isobel on whether this is something similar to what she had in mind…

three paintings of Isobel are diplayed on the cars below….  you can check out her paintings on her website http://isobelart.com/

I really wanted to write this reflective piece on my experience about the semester after the final presentations….but anyways…

A few incidences and things I learnt this semester:

1. “Welcome to the real world” – this was the first thing I noticed when I came to RMIT… the relationship between the faculty and the students seemed to be extremely formal…. It might be normal here, but back in NID we were used to sitting long hours discussing everything about life to design to politics to gossips and what not with our faculty members over two to three glasses of tea. At RMIT I could sense an aura of working under a management, finishing work on deadlines, submitting stuff at the right time no matter what…I didn’t feel much like a student. But that’s in a good way …I guess

1. “First email, wait for reply, then call for appointment…then meet” – Always fix an appointment before you go to meet anyone. This lesson was well learnt in Melbourne. In Nid when we usually start a research phase, we just go straight head on into the field trying to get as much of information about the project. We thought we could do this here too… so we just took off in search of carshare companies or offices, car share parking spots…and we landed up at the flexicar share office near by. To our surprise we were greeted by the Ceo of flexicar right at the door step. This came as a shock to us and led to us explaining all about the project…though we didn’t have to . All we wanted was some brochures and pamphlets about flexicar. We ended blurting out if we could fix an appointment with her to interview her on the company. She said she would talk with our project coordinator about it. Next thing we know…. “First email, wait for reply, then call for appointment…then meet”. Was an embarrassing issue …but good to know a little about the work culture here.

1. “I take my car at 9 am to the office…park it in a parking spot there, the car becomes a car share car for the time that the car is not being used by the owner and …at 6 pm …the car is back at the car park spot for the owner to drive back home”…..

This was one idea that went off the roof… It was only the beginning of all the confusion that was to follow in the project. It took me a long time to drop off this idea… mainly because people would start misusing it and the density of cars might actually increase with people having an intention to make a business out of it. Lesson learnt here was…. When people don’t agree, listen( not hear… listen!) on “why they dont”.

1. “the dollar to rupee coversion”- 1 $ = Rs 39 … and that’s all it takes for an entire day’s meal in India. So when we went to an Indian restaurant here in Melbourne, we freaked out on seeing the prices on the menu. A simple “ daal – roti” meal…in India is usually less that 25 Rs…. But over here, on calculating the conversion amount…it was about Rs 240…. About 10 times the price of that in India. But later on as the months passed by the conversion mentality just died out.

1. Tuesday’s domino effect…and then drowning in a standard cappuccino at Hudson…. – Every Tuesday at 1.30pm to 3.30 pm, we had discussion classes on the car share project. And every single time after the classes, I’d be one confused freak. It always felt like the work done the previous week was just a waste or just another thing that wouldn’t work. This usually ends up with me brooding over a standard cappuccino at the Hudson downstairs. After about an hour and a half…I’d end up changing the entire game plan, all pumped up to try something new. But later on trying out too many game plan changes was not working …led to another whole range of time management problems.

1. “What’s with the grades and submissions”- This is something that I found really difficult to keep up with… I have worked on dead lines and submissions before…but at NID the final output of the work required had to be the best, time and grades were not a factor, hence the freedom was more. But at RMIT the sheer pressure of need to submit a weekly report, somehow I think leads to work that have to be submitted in order to meet the deadline, be it well learnt or not. Still all of this did have a huge lesson in store for me….” Time Management”. A concept that I am very poor at, probably due to the amount of freedom I had at NID.

Smart glass – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polymer dispersed liquid crystal devices

In polymer dispersed liquid crystal devices (PDLCs), liquid crystal droplets are arranged in a sheet between two layers of glass. In the “off” state, they are randomly oriented and, when switched on, they align according to the electric field. The liquid crystals scatter light, without blocking it, thus the glass looks white even when in its transparent state. There is a possibility of controlling the amount of light and heat passing through, as discovered by SmartGlass International, when tints and special innerlayers are used. It is also possible to create fire-rated and anti X-Ray versions for use in special applications. The device operates in on or off states only. This technology has been used in interior and exterior settings for privacy control (for example conference rooms, intensive-care areas, bathroom/shower doors) and as a temporary projection screen. It has been marketed under the name of “LC SmartGlass or switchable privacy glass”. SPD Systems manufactures and markets this glass under the name of “SmartScreen”. A new (3rd) generation of switchable privacy film /glass, called 3G Privacy Film or NPD-LCD, is available now. NPD-LCD technology has greatly reduced haze level in clear state, lowered driving voltage from 80-100V to 20V and extended operational life-time many times.

Google Image Result for http://www.bayer.com/img/forschung/car/concept-car-en.jpg

Future studies for the automotive industry
Clear visions
Concept Car eXasis
“eXasis” Concept Car
Concept cars allow designers and engineers to go beyond the limits. Plastics from Bayer MaterialScience open up new possibilities.
Studies and concept cars were once again the stars at the Geneva Motor Show in 2007. But it wasn’t only the major carmakers who drew crowds of experts, photographers and fans. Interest also focused on Rinspeed, a small Swiss design company that has been attracting attention for 30 years. Rinspeed’s founder, Frank Rinderknecht, presented his latest creation in Geneva: ‘eXasis’ simply stole the show from many larger exhibitors. His car has a cigar-shaped body, from which the exposed wheels protrude. It is reminiscent of legendary racing cars from the early 20th century.
Zoom image Zoom image

“Cars need to be made lighter again to reduce CO2. For this reason, it is im­possible to do without modern plastics. Yet environmentally compatible cars must not be seen as a “declaration of abstinence”, says carmaker Frank Rinderknecht.
Yet the real highlight here is something else. The body and also the underbody are made of transparent, shiny yellow, high-tech Makrolon from Bayer Material­Science. Its insides are displayed for all to see without needing to open the engine hood. Concept cars like eXasis are the secret stars of international motor shows, and each is unveiled by its creators as if they had reinvented the wheel. Many companies simply call these concept cars “studies,” others prefer the term “show cars,” but one expression that has more or less become obsolete is “dream cars.” Yet the expression “dream cars” is probably the most apt, because concept cars are vehicles that enable designers and engineers to penetrate uncharted territory. They are visionary dreams with a solid substructure of engineering art and design know-how. Many years ago, Californian Harley J. Earl famously said: “For car designers, the present is already the past.” It was he who designed the Buick Y-Job in 1937, establishing a genre of car-making in which engineers and designers are given a free rein to question everything that is normally regarded as indispensable: Do cars have to have a steering wheel? Four wheels? A steel body? For the top stream of designers, such questions are banalities. Creativity starts at a higher level. Rinspeed’s Rinderknecht, for example, has spent the last 30 years building cars that are so unusual that people can recall the designs years later. Who could forget a car that shrank to fit the available parking space?

Google Image Result for http://www.matbase.com/img/web_newsmodule/News_Smart_Fortwo_Roof_Module.jpg

Largest ever car roof module made of polycarbonate
Largest ever car roof module made of polycarbonate
Source: www.materialica.com

The new “smart fortwo” epitomizes urban mobility and, with its low fuel consumption and low CO2 emission levels, is a shining example of environmental friendliness. One of the car’s highlights is its lightweight roof module made of Makrolon AG2677, a polycarbonate (PC) from Bayer MaterialScience AG that is tailor-made for automotive glazing.

“With an area of around 1.2 square meters, this is to date the largest polycarbonate roof module fitted in a production-line vehicle anywhere in the world,” says Dr. Sven Gestermann, Key Account Manager Automotive Glazing for Europe at Bayer MaterialScience. The plastic module is manufactured by Webasto AG, which is based in Stockdorf near Munich and is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of roof modules and sunroofs for the automotive industry.