Here comes Mahindra's wonder car

Utility vehicle major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) plans to make its pavilion at the Auto Expo 2006 a peek-into-the-future experience by showcasing the country's first locally developed hydrogen fuel vehicle, the HY-Alpha, a hybrid Scorpio and also an entertaining "interactive Scorpio".

The HY-Alpha, a single cylinder, three-wheeler cargo carrier, rolls off the Alpha platform. While the fuel-cell form of energy is one of the most common ways to power hydrogen vehicles the world over, the HY-Alpha will run on compressed hydrogen gas that will have a full tank capacity of 1.3 kg and return 175 km. The price of the vehicle will be announced at the expo starting on January 12.

"The advantage of this vehicle will be its zero carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emission and a much cleaner tail pipe emission," said Arun Jaura, vice-president (research and development) and product design, M&M.

HY-Alpha, according to Jaura, is an outcome of nearly two years of work. "Vehicle manufacturers want oil companies to develop clean fuel first and oil companies are expecting products to be rolled out first. We wanted to break this vicious cycle and the HY-Alpha is an outcome of that," he said.

The hybrid Scorpio on the other hand will be a prototype of a electric-cum-diesel or petrol engine vehicle. A product that is expected to surpass all existing standards of fuel economy, is about two years from a commercial launch.

A running model of this product is expected to be out in a year's time. While conventional fossil fuels like diesel and petrol will run the engine at regular and high speeds, low speed and idling will be handled by electric power.

Jaura said a third attraction at the M&M pavilion would be an "interactive Scorpio" that would be a technology bundle aimed at a very futuristic market.

Without revealing the details of what one can expect from the "interactive Scorpio", Jaura said that several of its features would be voice-enabled, allowing the user to run DVD or music apart from changing the texture of the glasses from smoked to non-smoked ones.

"The idea is to display a technology bundle and showcase high-tech vehicles on current platforms," Jaura said.

These products of the future have been developed indigenously. "Some of the our vendors may have outsourced some work from abroad," Jaura added.

FUTURE-PROOF

HY-Alpha will run on compressed hydrogen gas that will have a full tank capacity of 1.3 kg and a return of 175 km

Price of the vehicle will be announced at the expo starting on January 12

The car is to be a hybrid Scorpio and also an entertaining interactive Scorpio