The design of present day automobile lays more emphasis on safety, eco and environment friendliness, energy efficiency, comfort, re-cyclability etc. R&D efforts in this industrial sector need to address issues such as crashworthiness, structural integrity, vehicle dynamics, emission control, noise, vibration ad harshness, design of Powertrains, advanced materials, electronic control systems, mechatronics, information technology and aerodynamics etc.

There is hence a need for new breed of postgraduate engineers with indepth theoretical knowledge and practical experience in specialized and diversified emerging fields to meet the growing demands.

The deliberations on above led ARAI and VIT joining hands and bringing out a unique post graduate program in automotive engineering. The first two batches of 25 each completed the program in June 2006 and 2007 respectively. In order to meet the industries demand, the batch size has now been increased to 50. Accordingly, 3rd batch of 47 students is currently at ARAI completing their 3rd semester and 4th batch of 50 students is at VIT completing their 1st semester.

The heads meet : From left to right, Dr. B V A Rao, Director, International relations, VIT; Mr. Shrikant R. Marathe, Director, ARAI; Mr. G. Visvanathan, Chancellor, VIT; Mr. S Raju, Sr. Deputy Director, ARAI; Prof. V Kumar, Advisor, Academics and Head, PGA, ARAI.