With Pune being an automotive hub for some of the major car and bike manufacturers, one of the newer career options that is coming up in the city include that of automobile design and transportation design.

All clubbed under the common topic of industrial design, transportation design and automotive design are fields that offer design engineers a chance to take up a lucrative high paying career in these fields. “The reason automotive engineering finds a lot of prominence in the industry today is because of its sudden growth in the current market. Also, with India emerging as a market for potential international automobile brands, this is a career choice that engineers can select,” informs S V Chaitanya, HOD of Mechanical Engineering Dept. at AISSMS College of Engineering.

Chaitanya further informs that automotive engineering is best studied as a post-graduate course, as it helps the student get his basics in mechanical engineering in place. “By the university standards, we have a two-year full-time post-graduate course in automotive engineering. Students are taught automobile engine design, vehicle dynamics, automobile materials, safety and emission norms, and so on, over the two year period,” he says.

The course can either be studied as post-graduate diploma or directly after class XII. Although, if studied after engineering, it limits the scope for other engineers, as it is a core mechanical engineering related branch. Throwing more light on the course of transportation design, Umesh Tahsildar, executive director and CEO of DSK International School of Design, says, “Transportation Design mainly involves teaching students how to design vehicles that are used for transportation of people. It includes both the interior and exterior design for vehicles and unlike other design courses, is a more practical course.”

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