IIT Madras to establish campus at Auroville near Puducherry

CHENNAI: A new IIT Madras campus will come up at Auroville near Puducherry, focusing on sustainability. “It will be the fourth campus of IIT Madras. Auroville will be giving us 100 acres. We will set up a sustainability campus aligned to the objectives of Auroville. A test track for electric trucks will be set up as one of the first facilities on 20 acres,” director V Kamakoti told reporters on Monday.

The testing track will be part of the Centre of Excellence for Zero Emission Trucking (CoEZET). “We already have a satellite campus at Thaiyur, a foreign campus in Zanzibar, besides the main campus. The new campus will come into operation in the next 2-3 months. About 45% of fuel is consumed by trucks. If we cut down consumption by 50%, it will make a significant impact on carbon emissions.”

Union additional secretary for the ministry of heavy industries Hanif Qureshi said, “Unfortunately, India was a little late in adopting electric vehicles (EVs). The focus is not only on increasing the EVs. The condition is that they must be indigenous.”

Of the 32,500 electric chargers in the country, 60% to 70% are slow, he said. “About 40% to 50% of the cost of EVs comes from batteries as they have to be imported,” he said, urging researchers to develop battery technology for cheaper prices. Qureshi launched the EV battery engineering lab, focusing on key aspects of battery technology, and the battery charging infrastructure lab.

IIT-M also launched a web-enabled MTech in eMobility, a programme for working professionals in EV technology, and a certificate programme on eMobility, a 100-hour online course on cutting-edge knowledge in EVs. A report on the safe electrification of battery electric trucks for inflammable and hazardous goods transportation and a report on failure modes and effects analysis for battery electric trucks were released.

Preeti Banzal, senior scientist from the principal scientific advisor’s office, P K Banerjee, executive director, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, Manu Santhanam, dean, Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research, IIT-M, C S Shankar Ram, head, department of engineering design, Karthick Atmanathan, and Ajithkumar T K, chief executive officer CoEZET, were present.