BAJA SAEIndia 2023, presented by BPCL e-Drive, began the Phase 3 event for the eBAJA category at the Chitkara University, Baddi in Himachal Pradesh. This 4-day competition from April 5 to April 8 holds a series of distinctive challenges to assess the teams and the performance of their vehicles. 57 eBAJA teams registered for the event physically and arrived at the facility with their vehicles to be a part of the 16th edition of BAJA SAEINDIA.
The day kicked off with the teams arriving to the track and registering themselves to be a part of the physical round of eBAJA 2023. Registration was followed by both mechanical and electrical scrutiny; the mechanical scrutiny ensuring the build quality and safety of the buggy and other mechanical components, whereas the battery pack health, robustness of the electrical components, insulation of the High voltage components, etc. lie under the scope of the Electrical safety scrutiny.
The first attempt of scrutiny was completed by 25 teams in mechanical and 18 teams in electrical technical Inspection. The top-scoring teams of the Sales Presentation and CAE evaluation from Phase 2 – the virtual round held in December 2022, were further evaluated and the winners are as follows-
Focussing on the theme of “Refuel, Recharge, Reinvent”, phase 3 of BAJA SAEINDIA 2023 is a unique challenge where the limits of the student-fabricated vehicles are put to the test to physically validate their designs, which were assessed virtually over Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the competition conducted in the months of September and December of 2022 respectively. The physical round includes various individual dynamic events, which will evaluate the vehicle’s acceleration, manoeuvrability, suspension and tractive capabilities. The final round of various static events such as cost, sales & marketing, design, etc. will also be conducted parallely.
The press conference at Hotel Hyatt Regency, Chandigarh kicked off with the inaugural note of Sanjay Nibandhe, Chairman, Organizing Committee, BAJA SAEINDIA 2023 and Senior Deputy Director, ARAI who detailed the various activities of SAEINDIA that support the development of students pursuing diverse disciplines of engineering. He said, “It gives me immense pleasure to reach out to all of you at the 16th edition of BAJA SAEINDIA and the 8th edition of eBAJA. The concept of eBAJA was conceived even before the emergence of electric vehicles on Indian roads.
With a vision to electrify India’s future of mobility, we started with the first-of-its-kind eBAJA alongside the existing mBAJA, the IC engine buggies. What started with a 4.5 kW and 100Ah Lithium-Ion battery has now gone to a 9 kW and 144 Ah battery with 72 volts electrical system. Over the years, students have improved their skills in designing control systems, managing battery packs and handling the charge-discharge cycles.
