New ARAI Pune facility would be operational within a year

2014 was when global New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) agency took Indian vehicles very seriously. It showed the safety flaw of the Indian cars and that didn’t go well with the manufacturers. The car manufacturers in India then argued that they meet the Indian safety requirements and this made the government to upgrade their testing facilities. 

This new vehicle crash test centre will offer full frontal crash test, side impact crash and offset frontal crash test. ARAI is spending Rs 210 crore with the help of National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project. This new passive safety lab in Chakan will have advanced programmable sled and crash test facilities, electric AC drive crash test system, photo pits to capture under body view during crash tests, pole impact test facility, include barrier and barbecue test facilities. The facility will also have three centres of excellence for powertrain, structural dynamics and materials. ARAI is also setting up an inspection and certification test centre for in-use vehicles to upgrade the roadworthiness testing for them. The testing facility will be operational by the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016. 

There are 10 such centres coming up across the country under an the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways initiative out of which five centres will be set up by ARAI. The first such centre will be ready in the next couple of months at Nashik. This will replace the outdated PUC testing and hand-held equipment used by RTOs to assess life of in use vehicles.