Ashok Leyland Driving Technology At Indian Innovation

The Hinduja Group flagship firm Ashok Leyland (AL) reveals its future plans on the technology front and how the new Intelligent Exhaust Gas Recirculation (iEGR) works on the BS IV trucks.

- Bhargav TS

When all the European OEMs opted for Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system for reducing emissions and making their trucks BS IV ready, Ashok Leyland, the Chennai-based truck major proved its iEGR system enhances fuel efficiency by 10%, is cost effective and is also a lot more reliable. To achieve this, the truck major minimised the use of electronics in the new engine.

To know more about iEGR and how Ashok Leyland plans to compete with the global OEMs, Auto Components India spoke to the Chief Technology Officer of Ashok Leyland, Dr Seshu Bhagavathula. He said, “Today all the bus and truck companies are busy with BS IV and facing challenges in terms of telling customers how to handle the small amount of electronics that you have, how to handle the new system and service it and how fast you can repair. Now we have one more challenge of meeting BS VI by 2020 for which we have only 3 years. But we won’t stop here for BS IV, before rolling out BS VI we will come up with 3 more upgrades by understanding the customer requirement. The reason to do this is the market moving towards higher power to weight ratio, air-conditioning cabins, fully built solutions and I also observe the trend towards battery infrastructure. Also I see the speeds are going up, which will change the long haulage segment. So you have to match the requirements of the duty cycle much more and change your engine calibration parameters, and collect lot of data. All the works will be done during the next couple of years.”