Google Community Vehicle by Rajshekhar Dass and Team, India

2016: Mobility For All.

 

Designers:
Rajshekhar Dass
Abu Huraira Shaikh
Sunny Duseja
Joji Isaac
Pune, India

Biography:

Rajshekhar Dass is a final year student of Transportation design at DSK ISD, India. He is excited to step into the design industry, and says he would want to contribute ideas, solutions and philosophies to make this world a better place to live. He strongly believes design is a great platform to work towards solutions in terms of transportation design or product design to evolve our living standards and a much healthier planet to live on. His greatest strength is innovation and solving challenges.

Abu Huraira Shaikh is a transportation design management graduate from DSK ISD. He is currently interning at Forpeople (Multidisciplinary design agency), London. He has two major interests – people and transportation and aims to focus at this confluence. The teams approach was very honest as some of them (including him) spent their early years in an Indian village, which helped them in being thorough with the design context.

Sunny Duseja is a 4th Year Transportation Design Management student at DSK ISD. He is currently looking for an internship. He has a keen interest in working in car a design project and focusing on solving routine problems. He wants to gain experience by exploring new opportunities.

Joji Isaac Abraham is an Industrial Design student pursuing his International Masters in Digital Design Management at ISD [International School of Design] Rubika, DSK International campus, Pune, India.
He is currently doing his final internship at 3DGS Pune for 3DEXCITE, Germany, specializing in automotive visualization. He has already completed a six month internship at Technicon Design Gmbh, Germany, specializing in high quality alias modelling.

 

Description:

Our research and personal experiences in rural India gave us a common insight; where all the underserved areas in India are facing poor road conditions and connectivity issues. Hence, no medical accessibility during an emergency. This leads to other social issues. The underserved region majorly consists of the farmers.

Therefore, we focused to work towards farming (their major source of livelihood) and medical attention. This could improve their standard of living and ways to travel. So, the vehicle had to be simple to manufacture and have a low running cost. The vehicle must also be modular to be a farm vehicle which could also serve as an emergency vehicle for nearby areas.

The vehicle can be a part of a Google rural development program, where the vehicle is connected with Google’s Loon Balloon, which helps the farmer with better farming techniques, weather information etc. In return the farmer agrees to help during emergency. Farmers are given a credit for the help, which they can use for purchasing better seeds at subsidized costs. The wheels in particular are a unique design to tackle poor road conditions and loss of vehicle economy. It is also easy to maintain and long sustainability.