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Earlier this year, the Supreme Court of India enforced a ban on the registration of cars that have diesel engines displacing 2,000cc or above, until March 31, 2016, in Delhi. To keep sales in the Delhi and NCR regions going, Mahindra introduced a 1.99L mHawk diesel engine in the Scorpio and XUV500 in January 2016. Now, Tata Motors is expected to introduce a sub-2 litre diesel engine in order to prevent the loss of sales in Delhi.

Tata currently uses a 2,179cc engine in models like the Xenon, Safari Dicor, Safari Storme and Aria. It also has a 2,956cc engine in the Sumo Gold. Tata will be making modifications in its engine line-up, and the 2.2L engine is suspect number one. It remains to be seen how the tweaks will affect the displacement and output figures.

Source: Autocar India

Nice move by Tata after Mahindra did the same last month. This shows that the companies are being reactive to the changing market dynamics and reducing the engine capacity so as to remain relevant in the heavily competent market.

But we don't have the sales figures for Mahindra in Delhi/NCR for the month of January 2016 when the SUV's with reduced engine size were launched. It'll be interesting to see whether there has been any impact on the sales.

i wonder how the 2.2L is the first suspect
Tata had a 1948cc 2.0L which they used in the Sumo TCIC. I wonder if there will be any relation to that one - perhaps a CR4/Dicor version of that ?

As far as I know, the 2.2L engine is from an OEM (AVL?) & used by both Tata as well as Mahindra. I'd say Tata should be able to make the output same as what Mahindra has done, the engine being same.

Companies being so reactive to the Ruling; sign of things to come?
Should we be expecting much higher taxes on the post 2L category soon?

Without having emission numbers it will be difficult to say if this is actually good move by manufacturers or simply a commercial decision to circumvent supreme court ruling. Who knows court can reprimand all these guys in future as this ruling was never to do with engine CC , they don't want all such large vehicles to run on Diesel.

I believe we should have road tax linked with CO2 emissions which is easily possible as being done in EU

http://www.acea.be/uploads/publicati...rview_2013.pdf

Honestly I feel for the heavy vehicles on this side of 20 lakhs ,2.0L diesel and 1.5 turbo petrol is more than adequate for our roads with tunes depending on segment and weight to pull.
And for the 7-12 lakh group- 1.5L turbo diesel and 1/1.2 turbo petrol does the job very well.
In that regard, VW have done a very good job - one 2.0L diesel engine complying with law,powers almost all vehicles on their portfolio from 15-50 lakhs on varying tunes appropriate for the segment and one 1.5 L TDI for the vehicles costing below that level.
Its high time,other manufacturers follow suit and increase parts sharing.

This ban was more to reduce the environmental impact of big diesels than anything else. VW can hardly be called a 'model' for others to replicate in this regard. :)

Yes, that's right - our Tata Sierra 1996 (non-turbo) had the 1948 cc unit and produced 68 bhp - woefully inadequate for the kerb wt (over 1500 kg). Hopefully this engine would have sufficient safety margins for peak stresses for conversion to common rail. Without need for sleeving the block for down-sizing.
Of course, reliability issues would be another matter. We had the Sierra for 8 years and tho' we had travelled all over with it (from Madikeri to Nainital and places in between), niggling reliability issues remained a perennial problem.

This would be a good move by TATA, even though Mahindra was first off the blocks in response to the 'above' 2 ltr diesel engine ban. As things are going, this ban may be implemented nationwide and TATA needs to have an answer to this issue.

As printh has said above, VW has successfully implemented this model with their 2.0 Ltr TDi range, as also Renault with their 1.5 Ltr DCi. Both these engines, in their turbocharged avatars, can be found in different states of tune in a variety of cars - from hatchbacks to crossovers.

It is essential for TATA to make this engine reliable and also get it to the market quickly.

Hello printh,

While I agree with your idea of rationlizing engine capacities/outputs across price segments, I agree with Dry Ice that VW would hardly be a role model to follow, with the current mess that they are in. In fact, I already sense the consolidation in the of portfolios of the major domestic mfrs - Maruti, MnM, Tata among others - and I believe that they are now at the stage of the learning curve when they can move quickly to respond and adapt to changes in the market requirements.

Oh please no! The 2.2L diesel is a beautiful engine with driveability, performance and acceptable fuel economy. It's an all-rounder.

The 2.2L is a couple of generations newer than the old 1.9L TCIC. There is no way Tata will bring that engine back. It'll be much simpler to downsize the 2.2L to a <2.0L size (as Mahindra has done) than bring the old 1.9L up to speed.

Completely agree with you.
For me the discussion to incorporate 2.2 Ltr or 2 Ltr engine seems futile in the environment context without discussing the emission standards of that engine.
Like a luxury car maker representative said " Our cars suck Delhi's bad air, refine it and throw it out." So they indeed have achieved very low emission standard and their cars are better on road as far environment is concerned, even with higher CCs.
The only con is that the luxury/premium brand manufacturers who have already poured in huge amount of dollars for R & D in western world and have achieved Euro 6 norms, will greatly benefit albeit our local manufacturers who will have to now pump in large sums.
To counter this, we can fix a minimum and a maximum tax limit, based on vehicle value and emissions, so that our manufacturers at least aim for better emissions within the same capacity and whoever has lesser emission vehicle has an advantage.

+1.

The 1948cc engine was good for the TCIC setup. Having used this for a pretty decent distance, I can say that the engine itself was good, but it was used in vehicles that were a little too heavy for the engine. Hence the vehicles suffered. But that is OT here :)
(Wish I could still get a TataMobile with that 1948cc TCIC - that would be dream come true for me :) )

But mating the 1948cc block with a CR system will mean almost a new engine & the related development cycle. It should be simpler to downsize the 2.2 to 2.0.

Both are totally different engines. Although both are developed in techinical assitance from AVL, the Mhawk is a downsized version of the 2.5 ltr M2DICR which in turn was based on the Peugeot sourced old gen engine (XD3P?) that served in the MM550. I clearly remember there was a article in Autocar when Mahindra launched the Mhawk Scorpio with detailed history of the engine development (cant find a link if it exists). Even the block design is almost identical minus the bore size.

Not sure about the 2.2 Dicor's history though.