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The automotive industry is heading towards introduction of newer and newer technology aimed at providing better comforts and value to the end user. The public/ private transport vehicles in urban/rural areas with FE has wide level of acceptance in South East Asian countries. The acceptance of FE buses is mainly because of the ram air cooling of the engine, lesser maintenance, higher fuel efficiency etc whereas rear engine buses with entry plus one step are deprived of these benefits. Hence, we have designed and developed a new Front Engine Semi -Low Floor bus having floor at E+1 step. The primary design challenge was to meet the uniform floor throughout the length of the vehicle. This uniqueness will help in easy ingress and egress of the passengers which helps in reducing the turn around rime of the vehicle. Other challenges includes, meeting the customer requirements in terms of application, load and duty cycle for this new design.

Reliability has been a complicated domain of vehicle engineering, basically due to the quantum of the authentic data required, and variability of parameters that make real contributions to the subject. Reliability of a vehicle in very generic terms, is not only its functional worthiness and consistency, but also its probability to perform satisfactorily within the intended design life for a particular production batch, application domain, operation duty and customer use. Commercial vehicle industry is driven by returns that a vehicle gives, on the investments made, which depend on parameters like minimum turnaround time, lesser breakdowns, optimized maintenance interval and cost of operation etc. Severe operating conditions, regular customer abuse and higher expectations from products (as expected by Indian customer-base) demand a need to deliver more robust and reliable products.