KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian engineer Ruslin Tamsir who has made his mark as an inventor only has one advice to those keen in following his footsteps — “Don’t stop believing in yourself”.
The novel speaker enclosure that he designed has been installed in the British hypercar, McLaren Senna models since 2018, and his patent has also been successfully published by the European Patent Office (EPO).
Ruslin had successfully designed a unique fastener-less speaker enclosure and grille that would hold in place a speaker in the Senna’s door through an ‘invisible’ locking-feature that does not sacrifice the car’s aesthetic value and at the same time ensure a premium audio experience.
As simple as it may appear, the design took into account the many complexities in protecting the speakers from damage, fitting the speakers in tight corners and in delivering best sonic results for the ears.
In the case of the McLaren Senna, its loudspeaker assembly is integrated into a single grille/enclosure housing and mounted on the car’s door card.
Elaborating further on the patent to Bernama, the Kuala Lumpur native said that the EPO had published the patent on Oct 21 last year, meaning that Ruslin’s invention cannot be commercially made, used, distributed, imported, or sold by others without his consent.
Ruslin admitted his achievements came with their share of bumps and challenges, with the first being the short one-year period given set as the project’s timeline.
“I failed many times during the prototype stage and I was getting tired…there were also times when I felt like giving up the idea and starting all over again with a much more conventional approach.
“But I pushed through and numbers of prototypes later, the concept finally looked promising and was immediately sent for validation and testing which resulted in it being a proven and certified concept under the International Automotive Task Force (IATF)-16949 regulations,” he said.
Having a Malaysian touch on the Mclaren Senna is not the only achievement of Ruslin, as he had also worked on projects for other international automotive companies including BMW, Mini, and Volvo.
“Other projects that I worked on include the speaker panels for the latest BMW 5- and 7-series as well as the speakers’ panels for the latest Volvo XC90 and XC60 models. I worked on these at my previous workplace, Harman International in Germany since 2014,” he explained.
Harman international mainly designs and engineers in-car connectivity and audio systems.
Sharing on the values that contributed to his illustrious achievements, Ruslin said that it is important to keep challenging boundaries and step out of the comfort zone as well as be prepared to adapt to different cultures and working conditions.
“When I worked in Germany, I needed to communicate with my team in German and I took it as a challenge and attended German language foundation classes in Malaysia before I left and kept brushing it up while I was there,” he said.
Ruslin said he left Harman international in 2019 and founded a high-tech start-up company that is on track to develop Malaysia’s first fully electric bus.
“My vision through this company is to make Malaysia’s first homemade Electric-Vehicle (EV) bus and eventually become the nation’s first electric vehicle company…the EV bus will be the first EV bus made by Malaysian engineers for Malaysia,” he said.
Ruslin also said that he is willing to guide Malaysians who intend to go to Germany on what they can expect.
He can be reached on Facebook and LinkedIn via username Ruslin Tamsir. – Bernama
