Internship in Chassis Development at Skoda Auto

My internship at Skoda Auto lasted from 1st of September 2017 to 31st January 2018. The sharing of this experience will be limited, and I wouldn’t be sharing details as my work at Skoda was protected by a confidentiality agreement. 

I interned at the Chassis Development department of Skoda Auto in Mlada Boleslav in Czech Republic. My internship project was to work with a team to develop a chassis for a future Skoda vehicle to be sold in India. This internship experience was an excellent learning experience for me and was my first work experience in such a large company.
My work at Skoda auto consisted of researching customer requirements with regards to the chassis, thereafter, I worked on competitor benchmarking and looked at methods adopted by competitors to sell vehicles to the Indian customers.


For my final report I worked on chassis optimization and packaging of the vehicle,specifically on the MQB chassis platform. One of the requirements for the braking of the vehicle required a change in parts and in turn change in packaging of the vehicle. First, calculations were done to choose the part that would fit the requirement for braking thereafter the part was packed in the chassis on the CAD software CATIA. Some design changes and optimisations were required in the chassis for the packaging of the said part, this was all done on CATIA. The finished result and proposals were given to my supervisor for consideration. My supervisor was happy with my work and appreciated the report and the proposals.

Apart from working on my tasks one of the things that was newest to me was the work culture and working in a large company. Working in student teams is different from working in such a large company due to the difference in organization hierarchy, consisting of several teams within the chassis department which is part of the Research and Development department of Skoda Auto. The teams work together in developing a specific project, and decision making is done with the chassis development department. The decisions are relayed then to the main development department which gives the go/no-go for the decisions made by the teams.


The professionalism of the company was also eye-opening compared to smaller teams, I developed several personal skills I was open to more criticism and feedback in every stage of my work I was better at communicating with my colleagues in meetings and presentations. I also improved my presentation skills as I presented my work to the head of chassis development of Skoda Auto, at the end of my internship.

My internship experience was a fun one as I got apply the knowledge I learnt at university and see the results of it in a company. I worked with several like minded individuals and I furthered my knowledge in vehicle chassis technologies by working with the experienced colleagues in my department. It was a great experience to work at Skoda and be part of the Volkswagen Group

I believe my internship was very fruitful and it made me realize I want to work with automotive chassis instead of powertrains and electronics. It also made me realize that I am more inclined to vehicle development rather than testing. I furthered my skills in CATIA and improved my report writing and professional skills.

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