Citroen, A lot more Of This Remember to!

A few of weeks ago, Stellantis, the organization powering Citroen, Jeep and other large brand names, came to IIT Madras and organised a charge optimisation hackathon.A nearer look at the manufacturers Stellantis ownsAutomotive firms organising some variety of hackathons at schools is not a huge point. Nonetheless, the sheer scale at which this was conducted determined me to publish this write-up!Stellantis fundamentally tore apart 5 cars (together with competitors), sorted the elements in accordance to verticals like motor, suspension, interiors and so forth., installed respective engineers at each and every station, and in essence allowed us to ask them just about anything!I had the possibility to expend an total day with these individuals and speak to them at length about some of the design and style conclusions they designed, as very well as come to recognize the continual tug-of-war they experience amongst price and id when it will come to building a automobile for this section. It is not effortless!For someone who is really invested in the Indian vehicle field, this was a fantastic knowledge that I felt was worthy of sharing!I will record some appealing specifics that I felt were extremely insightful into how considerably imagined goes into producing a motor vehicle for the masses, and the engineering that is essential to pull it off!I also will spherical off with a little dialogue on Citroen’s posture in India. Their trouble assertion is wildly different from somebody like Tata/Maruti, despite them generating related cars and trucks for the very same goal viewers.Take note: This article will be rather nerdy and large on tech specifics, if you are just fascinated in the massive picture, skip to site 2!The SetupA little bit of a transient of this hackathon, Stellantis wanted ideas from the college student group of IIT Madras to minimise expense in the generation of their higher quantity offerings, i.e the C3 lineup (eC3, C3 Aircross and the C3).It was an elaborate set up by StellantisMost of the sections on show are from the C3, the Aircross and, shockingly, the Tata Punch!It turns out that there is an complete firm, A2mac1, that specialises in automotive benchmarking. Apart from other services, they tear up styles for every organization to look into the others’ improvements. They constructed the total setup you see earlier mentioned at IITM. So I even observed sections from the Maruti Baleno and other types here and there. Nonetheless, the primary concentration was on the Citroen C3, eC3, C3 Aircross and the Tata Punch.The sections were divided generally into interior, exterior and the internals. There were being motor blocks, pistons, gearboxes, suspension arms, gasoline tanks, radiators, alternators, bumpers, seats, lights, infotainment, electrical motors, brake rotors, and nearly every other section on show.With that in intellect, I will list some thrilling aspects and the imagined processes affiliated with them. The regular topic you ought to recall below is frugal engineering!Why does not the rear centre passenger get a headrest?You can see the middle headrest is stitched on and not retained as a different pieceIt’s quite widespread to see the 5th seat in a 5-seater car or truck not get a headrest, with Faisal quoting, “the centre passenger does not get a head” in virtually every single this kind of instance in his testimonials.Turns out that a tiny headrest costs about Rs. 750-1000 a piece. Now, that may possibly not feel like a ton. On the other hand, when you generate tens of hundreds of units yearly, the discounts stack up.Believe about it: the headrest by itself has metallic rails (that have to be potent enough to help effect, so they are ordinarily strong metal), foam, stitching, and slotting to go into the mum or dad bench. So, if client investigation suggests that the centre seat is not applied most of the time, funds could be diverted to someplace else in which it retains a lot more worth to the purchaser. Realistically speaking, that also makes feeling.I would say the deficiency of width and the gearbox hump in the centre seat is extra distressing than the deficiency of a headrest. Nonetheless, you can see Citroen has cutely stitched a mini-headrest into the rear bench as some sort of consolation.Variant Intelligent Insulation!Yet another incredibly intriguing issue I learnt Citroen and other brand names were being doing is changing up the foam insulation dependent on the variant of the car.So, pretty much all interiors have foam insulation connected to dampen the vibrations coming in from the street and underneath the hood. In this segment, having a 3-cylinder engine also usually means that NVH damping must be good, as 3-cylinder engines vibrate fairly a bit.There are several varieties of foams the sector uses to reach this. PU foam (polyurethane foam) is the most prevalent just one and is utilized in seating for very similar factors. Nevertheless, PU foam is expensive, and so for decrease variants, where by value optimisation is more critical, the PU foam is switched out for recycled foam.You can even see that the recycled foam is thicker than the PU foam, as its damping abilities are lesser than PU, so the engineers have run assessments to decide the thickness that achieves identical success.This portion properties the handbrake, the rear window switches and the rear cup holder, so it sits ideal earlier mentioned the gearbox.Dome Light-weight Engineering!Have a look at the intelligent circuitry behind the dome lights that we consider for granted each individual working day!There is not a great deal to understand or explain below, but have you ever puzzled how the dome lights have 3 configurations: Off, On and Door warning?Turns out it’s just 3 simple steel plates. At the to start with location, the switch completes the circuit by itself, and so your mild turns on. At the rightmost placing, you can see the switch rests on plastic, breaking the circuit.The center environment is an attention-grabbing a person. Seems to be like there is a sensor that plugs into the 3 prongs to the right and functions like some kind of a transistor, completing the circuit when a single of the doors is open.Anyway, the main issue is that this entire setup costs so very little nevertheless is so efficient neat!Headlights, Taillights and DRLsThe C3 Taillight is a significant unit, that properties a halogen unitThere had been a couple of appealing matters I discovered whilst chatting to the suitable engineers at the lights office (headlights and taillights).To start with, the layout of the headlights and taillights generally has a price connected with them. If you come to a decision to go for a halogen-based mostly lights method, you can go with a bigger-searching taillight, as the halogens sit in a reflective atmosphere all over them to reflect the mild all over the place, filling up the space.If you go with LEDs, your most important charge is with the LED itself. As a result, you generally see quick bursts of LEDs or an general smaller sized assembly. This, along with other motives, could be why the C3s taillights are physically bigger when compared to the Punch’s taillights.Another consideration of cost is the materials applied in these lights. As it turns out, there are 2 plastic resources employed amongst the headlights and taillights. The initially one can assist a reflective coating on major of it, so we can conserve expenditures by instantly moulding the pattern on to the housing and including the reflective coating on leading as a substitute of adding an additional reflective panel inside the housing like how it is normally carried out.Nevertheless, this substance is brittle (does not bend less than load), so if you use it in the headlights, it will crack, as headlights bear a large amount of drive from the wind. A further more robust, extra bendable content is used, but this calls for a reflective panel inside of it, so the charge is justified.Have a seem at that break up DRL setup, Citroen actually needed thatFinally, there is the price tag vs identity tug of war. This is most effective visible in the DRLs and headlamps. Thanks to the Punch and fairly much just about every other auto in the price tag segment, break up DRLs and headlamps have turn out to be the norm. Citroen has a design identification, which differentiates it in this current market.The design and style identification for the C3’s exterior is surely the entrance fascia. The way the Citroen emblem blends into the grille, sales opportunities into the DRLs and the headlamps.On the other hand, judging by whatever we have witnessed till now, in which even a Rs. 10 shave in output fees leads to major discounts when scaled up, this is a little bit of a lavish expend. To have 2 DRLs split across 2 housings and have them communicate with each other as to when they need to be on/off.This is the team’s selection to expend far more to differentiate by themselves visually from the other people.Tata places their symbol everywhereThis is a person of lots of illustrations of Tata placing their logo in almost each partThis is a very remaining-field observation on the other hand, what I found is that Tata places its symbol all over the place. And by everywhere, I signify it.Right from the motor block, to the plastics, to each individual achievable part. Even Citroen has the PSA logo, nevertheless, it is not as prevalent as what I observed with Tata.It reminded me of Apple and how they go through the trouble of lasering their logo on top rated of every chip within their phones, regardless of understanding that 99% of entrepreneurs will never ever see them. If it’s purely just owing to pride, it is a lovely factor to see.On a facet notice, these 3-cylinder engines are pretty modest. In no way seriously imagined the footprint to be this compact. It is essentially the sizing of 2 shoe boxes stacked on leading of just about every other.MiscellaneousThese are not automatically interesting things, but just amazing pictures I got. So take pleasure in!A piston from the 3-cylinder Tata Punch engineThe C3’s 6-pace gearbox: The left shaft is made up of the synchronisers guiding the action of gear shiftingBosch powers fundamental electronics like this throttle pedal to almost all carmakersA nearer look at how the “tilt” steering units are implementedThe subsequent webpage talks about the massive photo and concludes this piece:

Source hyperlink