Stupid Sending Off Ceremony

Stupid Shell People organized a stupid sending off ceremony in which they invited the stupid Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gillani to show off the stupid 'talent' of Pakistan.

Team Bekaar and Team UET were the only ones to bring their cars in their entirety, while Pakwheelers and Zaafir also brought their vehicles.

Kaar stole the show as the glimmering body made it onto different news channels :-)

Yaay!

Round 3 :-)

Where have I been sleeping?

The idea of Kaar was one of those shortlisted - propelling it into the next round - in IBA's Invent, the entrepreneurial challenge.

http://invent.iba.edu.pk/news-and-events.php

This is obviously testimony to the corporate promise of this engineering idea! (Ok, just kidding)

Anyhow, this entitles us to PKR 25k!

FORZA KAAR!

Kaar Driver Unscratched in Accident!

Ok...so I am not good with headlines.

But the news is real...Kaar had an unfortunate little accident that saw the roll-bar crumble down AFTER fulfilling its role. Thankfully, Mujahid, who was with the steering wheel, was unhurt in the minor accident.

Preliminary testing underway!

Blots, Bruises, Burns and a shit-load of Commitment

Fact of the matter is that it is not easy to make a car from scratch no matter how elementary. I have no idea how Ferrari makes the 599 or how Volkswagon makes the Beetle. But for us, making Kaar has literally brought forth our sweat and blood.

Good thing is that we had oodles of commitment towards making this project a success...

With a Ying, and a Yang, and a Yippity-Doo

When it dawned on to us...

A nice day to cap a hectic week. Dawn news was there to cover the first test-drive of Kaar, which finally got going today. Making a separate entry for the test run...

The turning wheels

A little update...

Engine installed, and a preliminary test run was done. Turns out suspension is horribly wobbly. New one to be installed asap.

Kaar on FM100 - Part 2

Kaar on FM100 - Part 1

Actions, not (merely) Words

Kaar features in The Daily Times on Monday 10th May

An International Experience Already

It was supposedly the culmination of a year's (our case at least) hard work in July that would have taken our SEM experience to the international level, but we were thrilled at having had contact with team members from Supermileage, a team from Iran.

Geographically, Iran is our neighbor. But a message from them fleetingly seemed one from Mars. Behold! Extraterrestrials!

Bad Days

These are bad days :-(

Not because we won't be able to get Kaar rolling on time, because we WILL get Kaar rolling in less than a week...

These are bad days because for us, efficiency seems to be taking a back-seat to expediency. The engineering aspect of the project seems to be spiraling into one of getting the job done. The need to show our sponsors that we 'got on track' seems to be taking center-stage.

Don't take me wrong...all of this SEEMS to be happening. It may seem that what seems now may not actually materialize. Whatever.

But one really big problem with our participation is that of benchmarks. Sadly, the best our predecessors could do was to 'get the car on-track'. That isn't saying much when you have 30 teams participating from Pakistan, but that is all there is to say. Obviously, we could have had an international benchmark of hundred or thousands of kilometers per liter but with us still in a technologically embryonic stage, that all becomes relevant...in a ten fifteen years?

On Air

Listen to this:

Kaar was on air today. Or Kaariers were on air rather.

Undeterred and unfazed from being aired on national radio, something the team-manager was, the camaraderie of Ossama, Sohaib and Mujahid had thirty minutes of express radio prelude to what could be to greater things to come, as they had a chit-chat with a host on FM100.

We'll try to find a recording and put it somewhere accessible, but for the moment, some of the things I can remember:

Problems: finances and lack of interest by the private sector

Chances of Success: 100%

Plaudits: NUST, and the faculty (especially DS Fareed-ud-Din Qureshi).

Messages: Give us money, and don't lose hope in your projects

Etcetera: Ye Awami gari hai, baton say nahi chalti. Ok, they didn't say that but they made it clear that Kaar was a people's car.

Fabrication hitting top gear.

Back-breaking work...as in really. Not just relying on the kharadiya, but doing much of the stuff ourselves.

Man down to illness.

COME ON KAAR!

May Day

As they say...MAYDAY MAYDAY

Why YOU want Kaar

Woohoo...a survey! Everybody likes a survey...

Err...no?

We conducted a little study of our own in these past weeks to see exactly how under-used our cars actually are. Before we go on to the actual findings, lets recap on what purpose the modern automobile runs ubiquitously on our roads.

Going to school; going to work; going shopping; going to a restaurant. Interestingly, the word 'going' is the common denominator in almost everything we do in our daily lives. And going is locomotion; transport; travel. Our cars serve the purpose like nothing else.

And while we are totally intoxicated in the level of mobility accrued by our cars, that the modern automobile is a stalwart of inefficiency and carbon dioxide emissions is something that we remain oblivious to. The technical backdrop of these claims aside, the mere aspect of our cars being so brutally under-used, is a real contribution to inefficiency when we consider the fact that at the end of the day, the car is supposed to help us move from point A to point B.

So how under-used our cars are?

Our study from major cross-roads in Islamabad and Rawalpindi reveals that over one-third of our cars have just one person. Not startling enough? Then, how about this...over 70 percent of our cars have either one or two passengers!
Shockingly, a mere 13.7 percent of our cars are running with a full load!

Now, the implication here is not to make you fill up your car to the brim with people before travelling, but just to make you aware each time you turn the car keys whether your trip is worth the emissions and the inefficiency, as inefficiency per capita will increase if the number of passengers of the car is small!

The alternate, obviously, is to buy Kaar :-)

...when we start its marketing anyways...

Anyhow, another part of the study was observing the number of passengers in taxi (excluding the empty ones). The results are in the pie-chart below. Tired of making obvious interpretations myself :-(