Electric Urban Mobility Solution (EUMS) for Indian Market - Personal Mobility - Market Analysis, Vehicle Architecture & Cost Estimation

Urban mobility in India needs restructuring with careful planning to include environmentally sustainable modes of transportation while also taking into consideration the rapid increase in population in urban areas, adverse air pollution, increasing traffic congestion and severe climatic changes compared to a few decades ago. This thesis aims to study the aforementioned conditions while also suggesting a possible personal urban mobility solution (a quadricycle) for alleviating the adverse situations in urban India. The market analysis chapter aims to understand various factors related to the automobile market, the automobile industry and general problems in urban India that could influence the design and engineering parameters of the proposed quadricycle. The chapter gives an overview of the factors and problems from various government reports and private studies to substantiate the aforementioned problems while sometimes providing best practice guidelines to tackle the problems. The chapter also reports on the Indian passenger vehicle market and the Li-ion battery market in India to understand the potential for a new electric quadricycle. The vehicle architecture chapter discusses various possible features, both technical and comfort features, that the proposed quadricycle could include while also justifying the vehicle dimensions and space utilization in an urban environment in comparison to a compact car. The chapter also discusses the survey that was curated for the purpose of gathering opinions of a random group of people in order to determine and understand the opinions of the survey respondents and include the data from the survey into the vehicle architecture, marketing and sales related chapters of this thesis. The cost estimation chapter aims to understand and quantify the costs of various components and processes to estimate cost of the proposed quadricycle from research papers and other sources; and also calculating a target cost for the proposed quadricycle by comparing prices of various products in the market - both two-wheelers and four-wheelers. The thesis also discusses a few possible business and marketing strategies in brief while also looking into the impact of COVID-19 on the automobile industry and also the future of urban mobility.