| The largest proving ground in the world now is in Columbus, United States, spread over close to 4,000 acres. A distant third is in China, spread over 2,700 acres in Tong County, near Beijing. |
| The Indore proving ground, where cars and bikes of the future will be tested under extreme conditions for safety and reliability, will house close to two dozen different types of roads and will be centre of attraction of automobile manufacturers world over. Among these will be a 14-km track that will accommodate a speed test up to 375 km per hour. |
| This will also be India's first proving ground and will be developed under the aegis of the Rs 1,718 crore National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project (Natrip). |
| Natrip officials said the proving ground in Indore would be a globally comparable facility for regulatory tests relating to brakes, performance, noise, electromagnetic interference, steering performance, speedometer calibration, fuel consumption, maximum speed, gradeability, air bag testing and anti-lock braking system testing. |
| In its keenness to make the state the home for this facility, the Madhya Pradesh government has allocated the entire land for just Rs 100, a sum just enough to give legal validity to the transaction. |
| "Huge automobile and parts manufacturing facilities will start looking at Indore and the surrounding region for their expansion plans," said Sunil Chaturvedi of Natrip. |
| The region already has automobile manufacturing facilities to a limited extent with operations like those of Force Motors, the Kinetic Group and Eicher's tractor making unit. |
| The proving ground is one of the seven such centres that are being developed by Natrip. |
| Over the next 10 years, Natrip plans to make a world-class location for every infrastructure-related requirement of the automobile industry like vehicle homologation centres in Manesar and Chennai a facility for testing and homologation of tractors, construction equipment, dumpers and trailers in Rae Bareilly, a centre for hill area driving training and in-use vehicle management in Silchar apart from upgrading ARAI, Pune and VRDE, Ahmednagar. |
| The Natrip project as whole will place India on the global automotive testing business that is currently valued at $570 billion. Meanwhile, the governing council of Natrip has cleared the appointment of Idiada of Spain as the lead consultant for the project. |
| The consortium led by Idiada will also have AVL of Austria and India's ICRA has co-members. The letter of engagement that is currently being processed for technical details is likely to be finalised by the second week of February 2005. |
Explore Business Standard