The Society of Automotive Engineers India (SAE) is preparing to launch yet another season of the BAJA (pronounced as BA-HA) series. The Grand Finale is taking place on 21 - 22 February and will be held at Pithampur, Indore. The student oriented international competition is home for budding talents of future engineers. This arrangement helps in a real life exposure of the challenges faced by manufacturers in industry. Taking the students off their books by letting them practically implement their skills, BAJA is acting as a bridge between bookish knowledge and hands-on experience in constructing a prototype four wheeled off-road vehicles. These vehicles are meant to participate and win races. Well, fun doesn’t end here as after the event is over these vehicles could also be bought by non-professional enthusiast for some weekend fun.
Drawing its roots from United States, Mini Baja was started by SAE International. It was only made possible until 2007 when it was launched under the leadership of Dr. Pawan Goenka. Mahindra & Mahindra holds a big hand in this event’s 8th iteration and are its title sponsors.
It is a mega event and the number of participants continue to increase each year. In 2013, 260 colleges submitted their registration out of which 120 teams were selected for the main round. This year is no exception as the application number have risen to 323 entries out of which 122 teams will be filtered through. The selected groups will design and build a functional, one seated, off-road recreational vehicle prototype that will battle for the title in a traditional BAJA-way. To catch up with the times of sustainable automobile engineering the first edition of e-BAJA will be introduced this time. Here, twelve electrical BAJA vehicles will run to support the cause. It is quite possible that they will recharge their batteries using solar cell and hence propel by electric motors.
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Speaking of the Finale, 15 to 20 teams will be selected from designing-developing skills and score obtained by racing their own vehicles. These will then be judged, for the innovation, durability, eco-friendly character, sustainability, acceleration and drivability that the young guns have put in. It will be a great learning curve for all those final year engineering students that are going to put their efforts in this.
Source : CarDekho