The exhaust systems maker is eyeing the commercial vehicle market in India and aims to roll out products from its Indian plants by 2015.
Exhaust systems and ride control management systems manufacturer Tenneco Automotive has revealed plans to enter the commercial vehicle segment in India. Addressing a press gathering in Chennai on April 17, Abhijit Mukherjee, managing director, said that by 2015, the company should be launching its exhaust solutions for the Indian market. These systems are to be manufactured at its existing plant in Hosur and an upcoming unit in Chakan.
The $7.2 billion company has put together a team of Chinese and Indian engineers at its technical centre in Shanghai to brainstorm technologies for this purpose. The technical centre is expected to produce both new technologies and develop ways of adopting Tenneco’s existing exhaust systems to Indian conditions in three years’ time. These engineers will provide constant inputs to the team in Shanghai, based on their interactions with Indian truck manufacturers.
Mukherjee also confirmed that the recently launched Maruti Ertiga, which has bagged close to 14,000 orders in a fortnight, carries ride-control systems manufactured by Tenneco.
“We foresee Indian regulations catching up with the ones in Europe and North America in the next five to seven years. Tenneco will be ready with exhaust solutions when that happens,” Mukherjee said. The company already has global tie-ups with CV majors like Caterpillar, John Deere, Navistar, MAN and Daimler, among others. “The challenge is now to develop technology that will suit these vehicles in Indian conditions,” Mukherjee added.
He also called on the government to issue guidelines that have a retrospective effect on vehicles that are more than 10 years old. “This should help in making the air cleaner and put existing technology to good use,” he said.
Asked if he sees a technical centre being set up in India sometime in the future, Mukherjee said that it does not look likely, “We’ll be expanding our application engineering and testing and validation works in India. We will not set up or duplicate a full R&D centre again as it won’t make much sense to do that.”
Mukherjee clarified that Tenneco’s definition of commercial vehicles includes both on-road (goods carriers), off-road (tractors, earth moving and construction equipments) and stationary markets (gensets).
This move marks a significant shift for Tenneco’s global works as Asia, along with Europe and South America, forms around 40 percent of the company’s revenue. Mukherjee said that by 2015, he expects a third of Tenneco’s overall revenue to come from the commercial vehicle sector.
Showcases emission products at ECT 2011
In November, Tenneco was a leading exhibitor at the ‘ECT 2011 – Aftertreatment Technologies, 2013 & Beyond’ event hosted by Emission Controls Manufacturers Association (ECMA) in New Delhi. The company highlighted its complete suite of innovative exhaust aftertreatment solutions. Speaking at the event, Mukherjee had said: “Tenneco is committed to delivering advanced emission control. Vehicle manufacturers around the globe continually face new regulations. Our technology roadmap for emission control ensures we have the right technologies at the right time to meet the needs of our customers – everywhere they are in the world.
Tenneco emission control technologies support gasoline (petrol), gasoline direct injection, flex-fuel, hybrid and diesel applications. The company integrates emissions components and supplies full exhaust systems that meet or exceed increasingly stringent emissions and noise regulations. Tenneco also helps vehicle manufacturers achieve improved fuel economy by developing lightweight components.
Some of the advanced technologies showcased at the event were:
XNOx Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR): XNOx combines Tenneco’s expertise in calibrating urea dosing systems with top-performing components such as the company’s XNOx injector to deliver an optimised solution with more than 95 percent NOx conversion efficiency.
The process uses a chemical reaction to convert toxic NOx from engine emissions into harmless nitrogen and H2O, ensuring that Tenneco’s customers are ready to meet the world’s increasingly stringent NOx emission standards and performance goals.
Thermal Regeneration Unit for Exhaust (TRUE-Clean): This system provides diesel particulate filter regeneration under any conditions with reduced fuel penalty and improved backpressure engine performance, especially with cold-duty cycles in city traffic. TRUE-Clean offers automatic active regenerating capabilities, and is unique in featuring flame stability control due to ion sensing. The thermal regeneration technology continuously monitors the diesel particulate filter’s temperature and soot levels. When the system senses that the filter should be cleaned, the unit automatically initiates the regeneration process while maintaining proper temperatures and controls until the regeneration cycle is complete.
Electrical Valve: A fully variable backpressure control valve, which enables vehicles using low-pressure exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) systems to minimise NOx emissions. Installed in the exhaust systems downstream from the diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) and diesel particulate filter (DPF), it continuously adjusts the required pressure and re-circulates some of the vehicle’s exhaust gas back to the engine’s intake side.
When combined with the OEM’s low pressure EGR system, which is designed to improve fuel economy compared to conventional high pressure EGR, the electrical valve can help to reduce NOx emissions by up to 50 percent, with little impact on exhaust system weight or performance.
Diesel Fuel Vaporiser: An external-dosing solution that provides efficient DPF regeneration. The vaporiser uses an electrically heated glow plug to heat and evaporate diesel fuel, then introduce it into the exhaust stream directly before the diesel oxidation catalyst. Because the heat generation occurs closer to the DPF, the vaporiser enables DPF regeneration without oil dilution and reduces thermal losses, helps improve fuel economy compared to vehicles without this system and, therefore, contributes to a reduction in CO2 emissions.
Its proprietary design works to virtually eliminate the clogging that is common with other vaporisers and also provides good diesel vapour distribution and low backpressure.
Asked if concentrating on two-wheelers is an option, Mukherjee said that Tenneco considered it strongly, “but we simply don’t have the resources to cater to the two-wheeler market in India.”
Tenneco’s Indian operation manufactures around 500,000 ride control units per month, 10-15percent of which go to the aftermarket sector. “We don’t have a very strong aftermarket presence in India. Our aftermarket contribution right now is very fragmented. We have around 50 dealers across the country,” he added.
KARTHIK H