India Creates The International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT)

Positive India:Delhi:The automotive industry is the sunshine industry in India contributing to over 7.5% to country’s GDP. Government of India has huge focus to facilitate and grow this industry. Creation of new automotive test centres in the country under NATRIP project, is an important step forward by the Government to support the need of the automotive industry in the backdrop of tightening regulatory framework and technology shift driven by market forces. ICAT is an important element of the automotive sector, with its world-class infrastructure and domain expertise providing services in development, testing, validation and homologation.
The International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT), Manesar, located in the northern automotive hub of India, is a leading world class automotive testing, certification and R&D service provider under the aegis of NATRIP (National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project), Government of India.
ICAT continues its endeavour towards knowledge sharing and dissemination, through seminars and events, on important topics like Power Train, Emission, HEV and EV technology, NVH, Crash, Lighting, Inspection & Certification and Fatigue.
As India moves towards adopting complete electric mobility by 2030, ICAT’s Power Train lab/ COE, EMC lab and Automotive Electrical and Electronics labs have started rendering testing and developmental services in this domain. With Centres of Excellence (CoE) in Component, Powertrain, NVH and Tyre, ICAT intends to eventually transform it into an automotive product development centre.
Vehicles for testing at ICAT
Automotive electrical and electronics lab (AEEL)
The AEEL is an important lab considering the rapid increase in the use of electrical and electronics in vehicles. The lab offers services for certification and validation for wide range of E&E components including systems, E-motors, ECUs, Batteries and RFIDS. It also provides consultancy services to the customers for product development and improvements.
Automotive electrical and electronics lab
Tyre Test Lab (TTL): ICAT has world class tyre test facilities being operated and managed by highly skilled and experienced team to deliver quality and swift services to customers. Tyre Test Lab is providing services to the tyre industry, vehicle manufactures and Bureau of Indian Standards. ICAT has transformed this lab into centre of excellence by developing new capabilities including the dual station endurance test rig and tyre rolling resistance test rig.
Passive Safety Lab (PSL):Passive Safety Lab is dedicated to support automotive industry for their needs of Crash Testing (Regulatory as well as Developmental), pedestrian protection testing, sled testing and airbag deployment testing. The PSL has state of the art test facilities capable of conducting crash testing of vehicles as per Indian and international regulations. Some of the services offered are frontal impact crash test, side impact crash test, side pole impact, rear impact test, static rollover and pedestrian protection testing. The lab has successfully completed correlation activities with renowned OEMs.
Director, ICAT, Dinesh Tyagi, said that ICAT R&D team is comprised of highly qualified, competent, innovative and self-motivated engineers backed by state-of-the-art testing and development facilities. He said that the Centre has started undertaking advanced industry sponsored R&D projects in the areas of frontier technologies like use of Artificial Intelligence and robotics.
Dinesh Tyagi further said that ICAT’s vision is to emerge as a leading R&D centre in Asia, working together with the automotive industry in developing state-of-the-art technologies. ICAT is also supporting the automotive industries for ISO/IEC 17025:2005 implementation and NABL accreditation of their laboratories