Ashok Leyland develops programmed powertrains

The commercial vehicle manufacturing company, Ashok Leyland (AL), has brought in more digital features to its powertrain applications to suit the Indian road conditions, customer expectations for better fuel efficiency and to be ready for the stringent environment norms and BS VI emission standards. For these the company has formulated new algorithms for powertrain.

The engine control unit or the powertrain control unit deciphers data from tyres, chassis through vibrations. Based on the data, the actuators will be controlled for different terrains. The control unit measures 15-20 parameters based on which the powertrain operations are optimised. The inbuilt algorithms tunes the actuators based on the logic derived from the data and deliver the utmost efficiency according to the road conditions.

Briefing the powertrain’s future, Seshu Bhagavathula, Chief Technology Officer of Ashok Leyland, told AutoComponents India that, “The software in the future powertrain is expected to measure different parameters and by this way efficiency is derived for different road conditions. By means of the data obtained by various parameters, we believe 20% increase in efficiency will be achieved. All this features could not be achieved with fully manual transmission but only with automated manual transmission (AMT) or fully automatic transmission.”