ARAI develops light weight bus body design
By Jim Gibbins - 1st March 2019
Pune – Pune-based Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) has designed a light weight bus body that is fully compliant with the body building code that ARAI claims delivers fuel savings of 8% compared with current commercial buses. Once the new design has been fully tested and validated, the technical details are to be shared with the OEMs and body builders for commercialization.
The newly developed bus bodywork, which has a steel content of just 13% (with the rest being aluminium) potentially, offers annual fuel savings of 3,000 litres and reductions of some 36 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the lifetime of the bus. The ARAI bus weighs 2,200-2,700kg, whereas the average bus of current designs weighs 3,000-3,500kgs.
