When 40-year-old mathematics teacher Bilal Ahmad from Srinagar drives his car, people stop and stare. Wherever he parks his car, a small crowd gathers to see and feel the car.
Ahmad’s car is being hailed as the Kashmir Valley’s first solar car. It has monocrystalline solar panels in which each photovoltaic (PV) cell is made from a single silicon crystal. As the Kashmir region is one of the coolest in the country, the solar panels in the car are designed to give higher efficiency even on low sunlight days.
The panels, says Ahmad, produce more kilowatt-hours of electricity than any other kind of solar receptor or polycrystalline panel. The innovation enables the doors to catch as much sunlight as possible by facing the sky. The remote-control operated panels can change direction as the Sun moves.
The car also has gullwing window doors that swing open upwards. The vehicle’s spacious interiors can accommodate five persons. Ahmad credits the inspiration behind the automobile design to John Zachary DeLorean, an engineer said to have created the most fantastic sports car in the world.
Ahmad had been working on developing a prototype solar car for 15 years. For the past two months outside his home in uptown Srinagar’s Sanat Nagar, there’s always a small crowd wanting to see his parked car.
“Cars like Mercedes and Ferrari are a dream of common people. Through my innovation, people will get a feel of driving a Ferrari,” says Ahmad.
Ahmad has spent over Rs 15 lakh in building the fully-automatic car after studying various 1950s models.
He says, “In 2009, I got the idea to make a car that ran on free energy. Obviously, free energy can mean an electric car that already was in existence. But I wanted to innovate and experiment. I purchased a Nissan Micra model in 2009 with the intention of making a hydrogen gas car. But I realised I could not produce enough hydrogen that the car needed, so I started working on the solar model. It will be of a dual type, chargeable at home and on solar energy.”
Above all, the car had to be luxurious.
He says, “With no external funding, I had to source equipment from foreign countries by myself. At times, I had to get several products to find one product suited for the job. I kept four solar panels. It took me around three years to design how much weight I should use in the car. Every day, I devote three hours to it.”
Recently, Anand Mahindra, Chairman of Mahindra Group, acknowledged Ahmad’s work on Twitter, saying: “Bilal’s passion is commendable. I applaud his single-handedly developing this prototype. Clearly, the design needs to evolve into a production-friendly version.”
Mahindra even offered his team at Mahindra Research Valley to collaborate with Ahmad to give the final touches to his innovation. Even Jammu and Kashmir politician Omar Abdullah tweeted about Ahmad’s innovation on June 20: “Solar car with #DeLorean #BackToTheFuture style doors. Certainly looks the part.”
Ahmad’s second ambition is to make students enjoy mathematics.
He says, “Interest in mathematics should have grown over the years given its rising need. I applied mathematical calculations in the whole process to build this car. Instead, there is a math phobia in India. Math students have reduced. Out of the 600 students preparing for NEET at the coaching centre I teach, only 30 are math students. It breaks my heart.”
