Tata's World Truck Thunders In!

Yes the world standard truck range from Tata Motors, many years in the offing was finally revealed to the media in Mumbai today and it ranks right up there not just in its aesthetic sense to mirror other large machinery from established names like Volvo, MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Kamaz, Renault, etc but also packs in enough of high tech and robust hardware to give its rivals a run for their money.

The quintessential aspect was not to design "a" truck but a whole new family where designs would be made on a modular approach and take in the entire gamut from two, three, four and even five-axle rigids and tippers plus also long haul tractors with two and three-axle prime movers capable of hauling tonnage from 10 to 75 tonnes. You must of course be wondering how the 75-tonne figure cropped up when the Indian road haulage rules only specify for a 49-tonne GCW but since this is a truck built for operation and sale all over the world, the 75-tonne capability is indicative of the ambitions Tata Motors has for this spanking new international standard truck.

Gone is the approach of a bare chassis (of varying lengths strengthened for diverse applications) into which is plonked an engine with just about enough power to plug along and with aggregates which were slightly beefed up aggregates from four decades ago. In its place have come cutting edge design and engineering and a whole new way of not reinventing the wheel but getting the best and most optimized aggregates from some of the best players in the world to offer custom-tailored transport solutions. Just this very thought was anathema in our trucking industry barely four to five years ago but we see this manifestation in its best and most glaring form in this new truck family from Tata Motors.

Outside and Inside

The first look on the huge tall proportions indicates this is a truly contemporary offering. The lines of its purpose built cabin (in normal, extended and high roof forms given operator preference for the application) are striking, both externally and internally. The cabin design is the work of noted Italian carrozzeria Stile Bertone who have a great deal of experience not just with designed Lamborghini sports cars but also truck cabs for many of the big European CV majors. The suspended tilt-cab design is now de rigeur in the world of trucks and thankfully Tata Motors has made this a standard approach to all offerings in this new range. If that's isn't all, the new safety elements in cab design have been incorporated to enable this new range of trucks to meet crash legislation norms even in their most demanding form in the European countries.

Bertone's expertise was not just in external styling and crash safety structures of the cab but also in the interior which is plusher and more comprehensively equipped than probably all the automobiles in the present Tata Motors indigenous car portfolio, honest! However this is also the key to understanding that this is a business tool which needs complete monitoring of all aspects when the vehicle is operating in exacting conditions and so the man at the controls needs all the information he can possibly have, in an easy to decipher manner to make the most efficient use of the capabilities possible. Highly ergonomic in its control placement and seating position to enable long hauls possible with least driver fatigue, a very classy ambience and loads of storage space. All cabins would be air conditioned and given that many fleet operators already revel in efficiency enhancers, the light car like controls were deliberately engineered to make the driving operation an easy detail rather than a muscle-building exercise a corollary of which also induced tiredness.

Styling the cab and its interior is one thing, making it strong and stiff with very low levels of NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) pervading through saw Tata Motors go in for top notch robotics in its weld and manufacturing process. Of course good design validated through extensive multi-poster in-house test rigs plus also over a million plus kilometres of actual on-road testing have benefitted the overall product. This held true also for the new design chassis frame plus the various suspension systems (from bogie-mounted units to leaf spring set-ups coupled with top notch hydraulic dampers and maybe in some cases air suspension as well) which were put through accelerated torture tests with double the capacity loads to prove the effectiveness of the set-up. The great thing about this new world standard truck is that it can incorporate either Tata's own engines, transmissions, axles and steering gear (if the operator is value inclined) or he could go and cherry pick from the range of state-of-the-art Cummins engines working with aggregates from such international big names as Eaton, ZF, Arwin Meritor, Rockwell, Dana, etc. This is truly the way the trucking world operates in Europe and the US and Tata Motors is the first homegrown CV maker to usher in this approach to India.

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Engine and Transmission

Truck makers in India earlier used to power their vehicles with a given power output that would be barely able to get on with the business. This meant that the low capacity engines with just about a modicum of technology sprinkled in to keep them going were always operating in the highest recesses of their power and torque band, making them highly stressed over the (limited) life-cycle of the vehicle. This approach has been junked with a range of powerplants which kicks off from 150PS and strokes its way to 560PS with locomotive-like torque thrusts to match. What this truly entails is not just ample power to move huge loads at speed but to have the engines operating in their best torque band for efficiency and with a great deal of power held in reserve should there be the need for it to be unleashed. This is a completely different thought process and absolutely welcome. The entire engine range is already Euro III and Euro IV compliant and is package ready for Euro V.

Transmissions will range from manual to fully automatic to fully automated (given the application for which the vehicle would be specified) and the axles would be just as ingenious with some of them featuring hub-reduction gearing. These trucks would also come with twin driven axles from day one should such an application be ordered by operators.

The overall design and development of this spanking new world standard Tata truck family was undertaken primarily by the company's teams in India working along with their counterparts at Tata-Daewoo Commercial Vehicles Co. Ltd. in South Korea. Additionally, Tata Motors' European Technical Centre based at Warwick in the UK played a key role in identifying processes, tests and validation for much of the work on all the prototypes and also the production engineering process. Tata Motors were not hesitant to put in their learning from their passenger car business and so they didn't skimp on the technology to manufacture the new truck, going to the best in the business to get the production machinery and processes. And considering that this truck would go on sale within the year even in South Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, Russia and Australia (all markets where Daewoo trucks were pretty strong), this was the most cost effective way to go about making it.

It is early days yet but for sure this new way of truck manufacturing is just the first part. Tata Motors with its near 70 per cent market share of the Indian CV market will now be ready to take the fight to the established biggies already ruling the roost in the tough heavy haulage segment of the CV business. And this has all to do with operators getting the best returns on their investment in the quickest way possible. This romance of the trucking business is what will determine how quickly the new truck changes perceptions and rewrites a new chapter in India's load haulage industry.