The First Formula One Motor Racing Driver from India

Kumar Ram Narain Karthikeyan was born on 14th January 1977 in Chennai. He did his schooling at Stanes Anglo Higher Secondary School in Coimbatore. His interest in motor sports began at a very early age. His father was a former Indian National Rally Champion, winning the South India Rally seven times. In his very first race, Narain Karthikeyan finished on the podium at Sriperumpudur in a Formula Maruti. Then, he went to the Elf Winfield Racing School in France. Narain Karthikeyan began motor racing way back in 1994 when he took part in the Formula Ford Zetec. In the same year, he became the first Indian to win the British Formula Ford Winter Series and went on to achieve a top three classification in the Portuguese Grand Prix at Estoril. Narain Karthikeyan won the Formula Asia Championship title in 1996 and became the first Indian to win an international series. In 1999, he participated in the Formula Three Championship Class where he drove in the Autosport British Formula Three Championship. He achieved five podium finishes and an additional two pole positions. He also managed three fastest laps and two lap records. He finished sixth in the Championship against a total of thirty drivers from over five countries. He also qualified sixth in the Macau Grand Prix finishing in the second leg. Narain Karthikeyan participated in the British Formula Three Championship again in 2000 and finished in fourth place. His biggest achievement in this year was winning the International Formula Three Race at Spa, Belgium. His name was being ranked in 2000 among some big shots like Michael Schumacher, David Coulthard and Ayrton Senna. Narain Karthikeyan considers Ayrton Senna as his idol. In 2001, he got a test drive opportunity with Benson and Hedges Jordan Honda EJ11. His impressive performance led him to another test drive contract at Silverstone. In 2002, he set a fastest time record in the Interlagos circuit. He claimed a pole position in the Telefonica World Series. In 2003, he entered the Super Fund World Series and finished fourth against some of the best drivers in the world. He was then offered a test drive contract by Formula One Team Minardi. Narain Karthikeyan is the first Formula One Motor racing driver from India. He has so far competed in Formula One, A1 Grand Prix and the Le Mans Series. He made his Formula One debut in 2005 with the Jordan Team. In 2013, he made a Formula One comeback after a gap of almost six years. He was also a Williams F1 test driver in 2006 and 2007. In 2007, he joined A1 Team India and raced in five weekend races. In the first race with the Team, he got the first points at Taupo, New Zealand. The team finished in fourth place in the A1 Grand Prix World Cup of Motorsports which has been their best so far. Like many other earlier F1 drivers, Narain Karthikeyan moved on to stock car racing and has driven the #60 Safe Auto Insurance Company Toyota Tundra for Wyler Racing in the 2010 NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) Camping World Truck Series. In January 2011, Narain Karthikeyan announced that he has signed up to drive for the Hispania Racing Team in the Formula One Season this year. He suffered a bad mishap during the Spanish Grand prix earlier this year in the month of May when he suffered second degree burns and a prolapsed disc. It has been a testing time for him since then. But he is back in action now and is fully recovered after some fierce training sessions. Narain Karthikeyan lives in Coimbatore. He picked up the most popular driver award at NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Banquet in November 2010. He was also honoured with the Padma Shri Award in 2012.

Stereo Cameras are the next big thing in Safety

Most of the high end luxury cars have started to pay attention to issues like detection of blind spots and technology concerning avoidance of collision. Three companies who have taken up this challenge are Autoliv Electronics, Continental and Subaru. Autoliv Electronics are doing well with the sales of radar units that help with blind spots and their sales have gone up about ten times in the last four years. They have produced over one million units last year all over the world. Autoliv Electronics is a Swedish company that started making airbags first. Now, it offers adaptive cruise control and night vision devices. It is working now on taking out stereo cameras that can help in pedestrian detection and lane departure warning. These cameras will also help in roadside recognition alerts. These cameras are likely to become popular very quickly. The blind-spot radar system along with the stereo cameras is a package that includes rear cross-traffic alert signals. This system alerts you on the approaching cars from the side when you are backing out of a parking space. This is a two-sensor system and costs about hundred dollars per sensor. These stereo cameras can do many things. Their most common feature will be lane-departure warning. The cameras can also control your high and low beams which will make it very convenient for you. The cameras can also recognize traffic signs and they can warn you about forward collision. There are certain things you can do with a camera which you cannot do with the radars and that is the recognition of traffic signs. The cost of the stereo cameras is not going to be much more expensive than the radar sensors. Introducing the stereo cameras to the cars’ safety system will help in reducing traffic accidents, particularly those accidents which involve pedestrians. The stereo cameras will use a six-dimensional analysis of image and they will be able to gauge the direction in which there is a forward movement. They will also be able to gauge a range with an accuracy of between twenty to thirty centimeters at a distance of twenty to thirty meters. The stereo cameras have a range of up to sixty meters which will help in the improvement of braking systems. The stereo cameras are going to set a good trend in the future of safety applications with their ability to help in lane departure warning and control of smart beams. About half of the reported accidents that result in major personal injuries are involving pedestrians and cars at the intersections. The stereo cameras’ ability to better gauge movements will help reduce such kinds of accidents. In heavy traffic conditions, these cameras will also alert the driver when the car ahead of him or her has moved if the driver does not react in few seconds. The technology can also help reduce damages caused by collision by cutting down the acceleration when it spots an obstacle in front and when the pedal is still being pushed forward. It will also be effective when a driver gets into the ‘drive’ mode unintentionally instead of the ‘reverse’ mode when backing out in a parking space. The design of the cameras will give an angle of detection wider than that provided by the radars.

The Mandatory Brake Override System

The brake override system which is proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is a good safety tool. Many people panic while driving if they have to stop the car in a hurry. 99.9% are comfortable to stop their car instantly when they become fluent behind the wheel but 0.1% probably requires this brake override system. Common sense may guide us to press the brake pedal if we have to stop the car instantly. But there are slim chances that our reflexes may be slow at the moment of demand or we may push the wrong pedals in panic. It is recommended that these override systems be implemented. The vehicles today are already quite complex; so, with a little addition of complexity, it is not going to tax your car further. Most of the new cars are already using drive-by-wire systems which involve a software change that instructs the car’s system to cut the throttle and let the car stop should both the pedals be held down in confusion. Mostly, the pedal sensors and the basic electronics are already doing this job. This software technology was brought out by Bayerischen Motor Werke (BMW) for their performance driving. It was first used in the BMW 750 series in the nineteen eighties as a performance enhancement tool for the heel-and-toe race style of driving in which the driver used the heel and toe of one foot to control two pedals at the same time such as the clutch and the brake. This brake override system is bound to save many lives. If it is set up properly, it will allow for brake and throttle applications like starting on a hill and in off-road use. It is not going to hinder the driving experience in any way. For people who are irritated at this system being made mandatory by the NHTSA, the manufacturers can cater to the whims of such people by introducing an on/off switch.

Keeping Kids Safe in the Car with Latch Connectors

Most of the cars make the installation of child safety seats difficult. If you want to keep your kids safe in your car, you have to seat them in a properly installed child safety seat. Latch connectors or lower anchors for children will make the process easy. Standardizing these anchors that car seats attach to will be a good idea. A new survey has pointed out that latch connectors in many cars are more difficult to use than they should be. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has observed that only one fifth of the high selling car models have latch connectors that are easy to use. This institute has teamed up with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute to assess how easy it is to use latch connectors in each car. Three factors were analyzed during the survey. The ease of access, how deep the anchors were in the seats and the ability to set up the child seats using less than forty pounds of force. A major problem found by the inspectors was that buckles and the plastic housing interfered with the anchors. The anchors often were buried deep within the backseat, forcing the adults to dig around in the cushions to find them. The latch connectors in most cars are hard to reach and many cars also avoid them for the middle seat. Only seven per cent of the cars in the survey had latch anchors in the middle of the second row seats and that is the safest place for the children to travel. If you are getting a new family car and you have young kids, you have to look for latch connectors that make child safety seat installation easy. The car models that made child seat installation easy were adjudged as Audi A4 Quattro, Cadillac Escalade and the Chevrolet Equinox among the top range. Models that failed the easy installation test were the 2011 Buick Enclave CX, Chevrolet Impala and Dodge Avenger Express.

Easy Fill Tire Alert System of Nissan

Your life is going to become easier with the Nissan Easy Fill Tire Alert System. Now you can take your car out on the road to roll with the proper tire pressure. You do not have to rely any more on the differing pressure gauges. The Easy Fill Tire Alert system developed by Nissan will trigger the car’s horn to inform you that the air pressure in the tires is at the optimum. When you are in the market for a new Nissan car, you can now get rid of the tire gauge and not worry about cold pressure. Nissan has launched this alert system which can handle all things about the tire pressure when you are filling the air in. The United States Department of Transportation has recommended that tire pressure checks should be done at least once a month and these checks should include the spare tire in the boot or hanging out at the rear or the underside of the car. Many people neglect to check the tire pressure at least once a month. If you own a car, the Nissan Easy Fill Tire Alert system will make your life very convenient with the feature that is wholly intuitive and fully capable of handling anything that you can imagine regarding tire pressure. It is designed to take the pressure monitoring which is sensor-based for your convenience. It can monitor the pressure of all the tires and will alert you on which tire could be problematic and give the exact pressure for you and you do not have to guess about the tires. The system will also function as a digital gauge when it fills up air in your tires and the car’s lights will notify you by means of flashing so that you know the air is being filled into the concerned tire and the car horn will honk when the pressure reaches the optimal point. In case, you, as a driver, are thinking about something else or daydreaming, and if you miss both the audio and the visual signals, then the car’s system will flash in rapid succession and honk thrice to let you know the air has gone in excess so that you can let some air out. Many cars, particularly the new ones, have several kinds of sensor systems which tell you when you need to add air pressure to the car tires. Yet, many car owners have found the systems to be either inaccurate or vague. Some have reported that from one pressure gauge to another, there may sometimes be a difference of three to four pounds. The Nissan system will give a warning light when the air pressure in the tire or tires becomes low, even when you are merely a single psi off. With this Easy Fill system, you can simply start to pump up the air pressure and forget about cold pressure measurement and the irritating pressure gauges at the petrol pumps. The system will take away whatever little quantity of brain calculations attached in keeping the right pressure of air in your car tires. It will definitely give you peace of mind with your busy schedules and with this system; you can maintain the correct air pressure in the car tires and get a safe ride. Nissan launched the Easy Fill Tire Alert system with the Altima 2013 and later on, it became the standard equipment in all Nissan models. This innovation by Nissan has made the inflation of tires an easy affair. Tires that are not inflated properly can triple the risk of an accident on the motorway. A delay in attending to the air pressure in the car tires will negatively affect the fuel economy and the car is likely to lose the fuel efficiency. When you are driving long distance, fuel economy will matter.

Daimler and BMW collaborate to make an Electric Car

The parent company of Mercedes Benz, Daimler and BMW are like the German equivalent of General Motors and Ford Motor Company. Both these companies are fierce competitors for superiority in the luxury car segment. Meanwhile, electric cars are creating an imbalance in their profit making journey in the automobile sector because of the zero emission features. An electric vehicle is being made today not only by a multinational corporate company but by a small enterprise as well. Both Daimler and BMW are now getting together to make the Visio M. The rivalry has been shelved to develop this electric car. When it comes out, it is going to be more effective and economical than the models that exist in the market today. Both these companies have brought in a dozen other partners to help research students at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (the TUM or the Technical University of Munich) in developing a smaller electric vehicle, the Visio M. After its launch, the Visio M is not going to be considered a car in legal terms. It is going to fall into the L7E category of the European Union. It is going to be categorized as a heavy electric motor quad-cycle. Currently, there is another powerful version existing in such a category with Renault’s Twizy. These L7E vehicles, though, will have few limitations. The weight of the Visio M cannot exceed eight hundred and eighty pounds. The output is also going to be limited to fifteen kilowatts which will be equivalent to just twenty horsepower. In comparison, a thirteen kilowatt Renault Twizy has a top speed of fifty miles per hour. Despite its smaller size and lower weight, the Visio M is going to be as safe as a traditional petrol engine car. BMW has recently taken out a series of Active E and Mini E test cars to get real time information on the usage of the electric powertrain. Daimler is also working on an electric Smart for Two cars just like the mini car manufacturer, Smart.

Advanced Apprentice Programme of Mercedes Benz

Mercedes Benz has taken a decision to set up an Apprenticeship Scheme based on the dual education system practiced in Germany. Many companies are now following the model set up in Germany and encouraged by the German government to set up apprenticeship schemes. This scheme lays stress on the blend of classroom theory and training with the hands-on technical experience of the actual workshop. About sixty per cent of the students who complete the high school level of education go on to take apprenticeships. The apprentices can opt for training and select a career as perhaps Parts/Accessories Specialists or Technicians. The student apprentices in the United Kingdom will get a chance to be trained at the new Mercedes Benz National Apprentice Academy in Milton Keynes. Mercedes Benz has provided dormitory facilities with single individual rooms. A practical training course can get the apprentices an NCQ Certificate (Native Command Queuing) which is designed to improve performance in technological studies. The apprentices will get to train on cars and diagnostic procedures with the latest technology. They will be paid a stipend while on training and this is one of the best apprenticeship schemes in the United Kingdom. The economic crisis has motivated a restructuring of the alignment between manufacture and servicing in several countries such as the United Kingdom. Mercedes Benz is extending the apprenticeship scheme even to the United States of America. It has a plant near Tuscaloosa in Alabama. It has actually started building cars there almost fifteen years ago. During this period, the sales in the United States and the evolution in technology became a challenge for Mercedes Benz with the complexities involved and it faced bigger problems in terms of the supply of skilled labour. Yet, Mercedes Benz is now trying to take the sharp aspects of the German dual education system and make it even better in the United States. It is going to start with a class of sixty apprentices or `mecatronic’ trainees, as they are called, beginning this fall. Many apprentices have enrolled in a three year program also at the Mercedes Benz plant at the outskirts of Stuttgart. These apprentices are getting trained in `mecatronics’ which is a mix of electronic and mechanical engineering. The training will set them up for a full time career for life should they opt to stay on with Mercedes Benz and in majority of the cases, they do get themselves confirmed as technicians. This, in turn, solves Mercedes Benz’s problem of looking around for skilled labour which does not come without extra cost. Each year, Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz, hires around two thousand apprentices and that is safely about one third of the car sector’s annual intake in Germany. The Mercedes Benz Apprentice Training program has been a priority with the car maker since the past one hundred and twenty years. When the demand for skilled workers had increased sharply in 1888, Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler created something that was unique and revolutionary. They decided to train and mould their young recruits and turn them into full-fledged technicians. Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft started the apprenticeship program and trained individual apprentices.

5 Most Dangerous Cars as Rated by IIHS

There are some cars that are good in surviving car crashes and protecting the passengers far better than others. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has done some crash tests on cars to determine the best and the worst. This Institute has always remained dedicated in promoting the reduction of the impact of crashes on the roads in the United States of America. The Institute set up ratings in four categories. The first category was the frontal crash where the cars move at forty miles per hour and collide head-on with a barrier. The second category was the side impact crash in which an SUV-like demo object hits the driver’s side at thirty one miles per hour. The third category was the rollover rating. Here, the corner of the car is hit by a metal plate to check the force it can endure before it rolls over. The fourth category was the rear impact protection rating to emphasize the safety of the seats and the ability of the seatbelts to protect from a whiplash. Five cars that received indifferent ratings and were deemed dangerous were: 1. Dodge Ram 1500 – It received marginal ratings in side impact and rollover categories. It weighs half a ton. It does not have an impressive safety track record. 2. Chevrolet Colorado Crew Cab – It received a poor rating for side impact and marginal for rollover and rear impact categories. It is a light truck made by General Motors. Last year in November, there was a recall of over five thousand Colorado units for seat belt safety concern. 3. Mazda CX 7 – It received a marginal rating for rollover and rear impact categories. It has not been considered as a safe car to drive. 4. Mazda CX 9 – It has also received marginal ratings in rollover and rear impact categories. It has the lowest strength-to-weight ratio among all the mid-sized SUVS tested by the IIHS. This ratio tells us about the force impact a roof can endure before it crushes five inches. 5. Nissan Pathfinder – It received marginal ratings in rollover and rear impact categories. The Pathfinder is liable to be thirty per cent more risky at the time of rollover as reported during the tests.

Which Cars do Men and Women want?

`Truecar.com’ is a car research company which has completed a latest survey that has focused on the differences in the genders in their preferences when buying cars. It has reported that men like big sports cars while women go for practical and flexible cars. It narrowed down its study to five most preferred cars that men and women opt for. The summary is that men want a spectacular ride while women want practicality. Women buyers showed their inclination towards small and fuel efficient cars. Men buyers wanted a fast sports car with an impressive curb look or they looked out for a 4WD SUV. The study involved information on gender preferences, taking into account eight million vehicle purchases made during the last year. The five preferred cars for women are: • Volvo S40 – About fifty eight per cent of the purchases by women last year were for Volvo S40. It is a high end sedan. It is a spacious and safe car for commuting. • Nissan Rogue – It has good safety and visibility features. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has given the car good marks after testing it for overall crash protection. It is a crossover car and women like it because of its versatility and it does not look like a minivan which works in its favor with women. It looks spacious and at the same time resembles a sports model. • Volkswagen EOS – it has a good fuel economy and gives thirty miles per gallon on the highway. It is a convertible hardtop with sufficient legroom. It is also known as a coupe convertible with sunroof. It offers four airbags. • Volkswagen Beetle – About a couple of decades back, it was the most sought after car by women and it still holds its place in the top five. Now, men have also started buying it more after its modifications with its sloping roof. • Hyundai Tucson – It is a crossover car which gives good mileage for its big size with twenty seven miles per gallon on the highway. It has got a good panoramic sunroof and luggage space to keep strollers for kids. The top five cars that men prefer are: • Porsche 911 – Male car buying is dominated by cars like this. It has the highest buying ratio among men. • GMC Sierra – When the attention of men shifts from sleek race cars, it goes to the big brawny cars like GMC Sierra. It is a half-ton pickup car. It projects a complete macho image. It does not give very good mileage (21 mpg) but is ideal to tow boats or motor bikes. • The F Series of Ford Motor – They are popular in the full size pickup range. Men like them for their luxurious rides and off-road adventures. • Chevrolet Corvette- This is an iconic sports model. It is General Motor’s most powerful output. It is named after a small warship and has been there since the past sixty years. • Chevrolet Silverado – It will also carry whatever weight men will load on to it. It is excellent when you are looking for a pickup truck or going out on a camping trip for the weekend.