What is Sustainable Development in the Automotive Industry?

Have you ever wondered what the future of mobility in India will look like ten years from now? Will flying cars finally take to the skies and surmised, what if there are traffic jams there? Of course, flying cars have been in the public imagination for decades, yet the technology infrastructure that would support them is still a long shot. Even if this is in the realm of fantasy, there’s one forecast that’s not so outlandish — in fact, it’s already happening: that AI in Electric Vehicles (EVs) is going to revolutionize the automobile industry in India. We’d know since we’re on the front lines developing the technology that will make the future of electric vehicles in the world.

Reminiscing when we started, we were a group of like-minded individuals cohering to do something transformational that addressed the burgeoning challenge of global mobility with intelligent solutions. When Raptee.HV was formed, we intended to design and develop an EV — and not just any EV, but an intelligent electric motorcycle. We were aware that creating an AI-powered vehicle that was both effective and affordable would be challenging. Yet we geared up to tackle this challenge head-on. We began by creating opportunities by unearthing the modern challenges plaguing the future of urban mobility and striving to fill those gaps.

India, the world’s second-largest market for two-wheel vehicles, does not yet seem to have a single electric motorcycle optimized for city driving. In recent years, the EV and adjacent sectors have predicted that the growth of the EV market in India would be by a CAGR of 49% between 2022 to 2030, which may mean gasoline-powered vehicles may lose their spot as the most dominant type of vehicle on the roads and streets. But despite such immense growth potential, today’s EVs occasionally raise safety and reliability questions.

We knew we had to transform the narrative around EVs, and it drove us to make an impact. From there, we started exploring technologies that could help us create a solution that addressed the concerns of future urban mobility while achieving sustainability goals that would reduce the effects of climate change. At Raptee.HV, we believe that the best solution is one that serves the greater good. Altair believes that too, which is why we asked them to partner with us and help us succeed in achieving our vision. Call it an EV-olution.

Safety and Sustainability, the Promise of Advanced Technologies

<p style="text-align: center;">Safety and Sustainability, the Promise of Advanced Technologies</p>

For a long time now, people have debated if mankind will be driven by ever-evolving AI in the future. And while we were speculating about the distant time, AI gently made its way into the present — first with a drop, then with a splash. Now, AI is all around us, even where we might not suspect it. Consciously or not, AI is becoming ubiquitous. It has revolutionized the speed and agility of product development by providing insights for effective decision-making and, in some cases, making the decision.

With AI becoming central to development processes and other business operations, it was only a matter before the technology was embedded into products themselves. For us, it was a question of how to embed this innovative technology for sustainable development throughout the EV manufacturing process and Raptee.HV’s electric motorcycle itself. We didn’t just want to make any E-motorcycle — we wanted to craft an EV that’s safe, sustainable, and smart to solve everyday mobility problems. We know that the four-wheelers we see today are smartly designed and have extensive embedded systems features for safety, so why couldn’t that be the case with two-wheel vehicles, too?

And AI makes a strong case for motorcycles as well to be designed on a safe and sustainable platform. We are also committed to leveraging technology for sustainable development. We are proud to have stayed true to that, and Altair has kept us honest throughout this journey.

Our Journey with Altair

Raptee.HV’s focus is to build high-reliability mobility products that deliver maximum performance. As a startup, we don’t have many previous platforms or designs to depend on, so innovating anything requires multiple iterations. This becomes even truer when you consider the standards we hold ourselves to.

And as an EV manufacturer, prototyping and testing our vehicles are essential in ensuring rider safety. There are nearly 400 components that go into our vehicles — from big pieces like the outer body panel right down to the smallest bolt. Advanced cutting-edge software like Altair’s helped us optimize every part of our vehicle and ensure vehicle and rider safety. It goes without saying that this type of technology saves us a considerable amount of time and helps us reach our markets more quickly. Without the comfortable computerized simulation tools we have at our disposal, it would take us years to build our product frame, let alone make it as efficient as we want. As a startup, we know the value of time and money and the constraining effect they can have when they’re scarce.

We needed reliable tools that could help us reliably reduce iteration time, and Altair helped us achieve that with their simulation platform, enabling us to validate our components faster and with high fidelity.

It also saved us time by helping us go in the right direction the first time around. We are incredibly grateful for Altair SimSolid®, which allowed us to validate our designs early. Simulation, combined with AI, are crucial pieces of technology that prevent prototyping errors whose effects could be catastrophic.

Developing optimized automotive products requires multiple design parameters to be validated — structural, thermal, and CFD, impact, loads estimation, electronics simulation for heat transfer, and EMI/EMC losses, to name a few. Altair technology allowed us to do all this using a single platform.

To highlight a few instances of Altair’s technology at work, our vehicle engineering team employed Altair® MotionView® for precise load optimization to comprehend the dynamics of our motorcycles.

The e-motorcycle battery is one of the vehicle’s most vital components. Things can get complicated if the temperature is not adequately analyzed, and malfunctions can lead to sparks or fires. Altair’s Battery Thermal Simulation helped us achieve the required level of safety for our vehicles’ batteries.

Additionally, Altair Acusolve CFD™ helped us understand the bike’s flow validation to reduce its drag, while Altair® Inspire™, Altair® OptiStruct®, and Altair SimSolid proved to be the most effective tools for multimodal and structural analysis. Altair® SimLab® further helped us cover the aspects of electronic components’ structural and thermal stability.

It takes serious engineering to develop a product for the future that is safe, designed for sustainability and has the smarts to solve everyday urban mobility problems. Therefore, advanced technology-driven solutions and simulations are a core part of our journey. We will continue partnering with Altair as newer variants of our E-motorcycle evolve over time and stay true to our original promise to redefine urban mobility.