[sh3lby]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

See my earlier post. How come there are relatively small companies, not big international ones, that can design and produce small marine diesels. What’s the difference in economics?

One point I haven't seen mentioned here, could it be the lack of a completely industrialized production sector in India?

India just doesn't seem to have the CNC, machining and production capability that European giants do. Combine it with the fact that there are barely opportunities for mechanical engineers or skilled people who are passionate about this in India without a big hit in pay?

Is it because the R&D sector in India is highly lacking, wherein funds for anything apart from tech-based startups or ventures in core engineering are lacking?

Forgive me if some points seem naive.

[ArvindMaveric]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Boeing would rather focus on other important matters like cutting corners in the development of a new variant of an old aircraft.

And also focus on silencing whistleblowers if I may add

[Samarth 619]

In the 2 wheeler world, we're building our own engines. And its no rocket science, although it is a money-spending R&D exercise, and it does require commitment to quality and consistency.

I've been to Bajaj Auto plant in 2013.
They used to measure piston and block size in accuracies upto 100th of a milimeter, back then. Means, a 58mm bore piston is made with the aim of 58.00mm, one measuring 57.99 or 58.01 is not acceptable, I think that's what they meant in their introduction video.
They also said, year 2015 is their target for zero defectives. Today, we can see its effect.

If anyone requests, I'll share the experience of the industrial visit I had as a professor, with my students.


Since the earlier 2000's, Bajaj has been trying and they did get out a good quality product in Pulsar. However, today's high quality consistency & focus on performance was missing. Back then, you could get a good piece mostly. Rarely, you got one requiring minor changes or repairs, but that's it, no lemons as such.

Engine making today is not a problem, problem is justifying the costs in the company itself, when engines exist already.
Cashflow models are hard to maintain. Dealership networks & relations are hard to maintain.
Every new engine or a new bike/car requires homologation and road fitness tests, these are not cheap by any means and running up to Lakhs of rupees per model, combined with other industrial & running costs, they create a situation where you're in an oligopoly (few (double digit) sellers, many buyers).
Every new engine is a 25 year commitment for availability of parts too.


Even cold drink industry is in oligopoly, it doesn't mean the cold drink is tough to manufacture.
Making a company will break your back though, Ask VG Siddharth, or better don't, coz we all know what happened.

[Cry0gen]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

See my earlier post. How come there are relatively small companies, not big international ones, that can design and produce small marine diesels. What’s the difference in economics?

Jeroen

They are primarily engine manufacturers. Let's take the example of aviation: Rolls royce/pratt whitney does not build aircrafts, whereas airbus/boeing does. Yet you will find the engines of the former in the aircrafts manufactured by the latter. It's all in the economics and prevalent expertise. As I said, a petrol/diesel engine of a certain manufacturer is not much different from that of the other. Any further innovation in engine tech is actually very difficult and thus any further new investment in the R&D of the same by a relatively new player will always be a risky bet,until and unless it's for a game changing one.

Let me ask a question: were there any groundbreaking innovations in the automobile engine tech in the global sphere in the last 2 decades or so? Groundbreaking mind that. There has been none. So at present the point is really moot to expect indigenous engines from Indian manufacturers. It will just bleed the company.

[Rocketscience]

Originally Posted by sh3lby

India just doesn't seem to have the CNC, machining and production capability that European giants do. Combine it with the fact that there are barely opportunities for mechanical engineers or skilled people who are passionate about this in India without a big hit in pay?

This is way off the mark and be it Indian origin 2 wheeler manufacturers like Bajaj, or auto giants like Mahindra or even foreign manufacturers with extensive Indian manufacturing like even Maruti Suzuki, India has no shortage of engine making talent or machines and production capacity and capability, look at the 2.0L Direct Injection Turbo Petrol engine in XUV700, it has decent power output even by Toyota standards leave alone being from India, that wouldn't be possible if India had 1940s tooling for engines or used carpenters to make them.

On a serious note, this quote from Samarth619 perfectly sums up the engine making standards which are world class for all the manufacturers in India, 2 wheeler or 4 wheeler, Indian origin or foreign with manufacturing here, force motors even manufactures engines for Mercedes Benz and BMW.

Originally Posted by Samarth 619

I've been to Bajaj Auto plant in 2013.
They used to measure piston and block size in accuracies upto 100th of a milimeter, back then. Means, a 58mm bore piston is made with the aim of 58.00mm, one measuring 57.99 or 58.01 is not acceptable, I think that's what they meant in their introduction video.
They also said, year 2015 is their target for zero defectives. Today, we can see its effect.

Originally Posted by Cry0gen

Let me ask a question: were there any groundbreaking innovations in the automobile engine tech in the global sphere in the last 2 decades or so? Groundbreaking mind that. There has been none. So at present the point is really moot to expect indigenous engines from Indian manufacturers. It will just bleed the company.

There have been quite a few groundbreaking innovations like. Some of them I remember are

-Free Valve Technology - Potentially the most groundbreaking technology that can dramatically improve both efficiency and power.

-Tremendous improvements in Hybrids and Turbo Engines - Turbo engines have existed for a long time but have been only properly implemented in the last 2 decades with gems like 1.0 Hyundai Kappa Turbo, 1.0 VW Turbo, 1.5/1.6 VW TDi and 1.6 U2 CRDi and so many engines which have benefited from years of R&D prior and are efficient, powerful along with good drivability in most of them. Even NA engines have seen a marked shift from peaky power delivery to city friendly power available from crawling speed and greatly giving the feeling of quick accelaration and peppyness in City environments. The Hybrids have also seen massive development and improvement during this time, which is groundbreaking in its own regards.

- Variable compression ratio engines have being experimented and could become the norm, then there is direct injection for petrols in the mainstream and even cylinder deactivation technology available in engines below 20 lakh rupees, hell, most of the improvements and cutting edge technologies are available in engines that are accessible today while the most exotic ones, a lot of which Iam surely missing are there in hypercars by Bugatti and Koenigsegg.

You can get even more such info in some great youtube channels like - driving 4 answers which only talks about engine and related tech, there are a whole host of tech introduced in the era you mentioned and some of it might be introduced in the future as well if electric doesn't take over. And like I had mentioned in my previous post, Indian manufacturers like Mahindra, Bajaj, TVS, even Royal Enfield have made great strides in the last 2 decades and most may continue to do so in the near future as well, they are indeed doing well and investing in engines has not/will not bleed the companies like it may have 20 or 30 years ago.

[dhanushs]

The expectations with respect to Size, Weight, NVH, power/torque Operating range, cross platform deploy ability is much more demanding when compared to marine/special purpose applications.
The engineering involved and R&D is huge and chances of things not going your way are high.. and hence cost will be limitation.

If ICE was the only way forward, we should’ve seen more and more ingenious products.

[svsantosh]

Car and Bike makers these days are 60% design houses, 30% marketing houses, 10% engineering companies.

All they do is design a product based on some market study (mashed with a management vision if any), find or develop vendors to bring Engines, transmissions, suspensions, HVAV units, ECMs and electronics/wiring and put it together.

Marketing does their work to sell what the engineers put together. If it flops like Jimny blame game begins.

Engine houses (& equally important are gear box companies) are massively reliant on core engineering and very time consuming work. NOTE - Engine/Trans companies are small and not a capital intensive companies, as seen from their share value and net worth. Think of them as Artists with a spanner in hand, Pinninfarina guys with a tool in their hand instead of a scalpel. They are a huge time taking entity and it does not reflect good on a car maker to have 2 schools of thoughts.

Car making today is a fast paced world with a 4-6 year life of a car or platform, but a engine can cut across 10 different car companies and 20 different cars - SUV to MUV can drive on a 1.3 DDiS - best example out there.

I remember a name - Magnet Marelli - they were the Pioneers in AMT - the life altering moment in INDIAN car Industry. Maruti Celerio was the 2nd car to come with AMT. Nano beat it by a few months but was a Dud. The gearbox was existing one, but Maruti did not bother to invest in R&D for the Magnet Marelli tech.

Many may not know here, but Hindustan Power Plus (Now acquired by Caterpillar) was first testing AMT on their employee/staff pickup-drop Ashok Leyland buses back in 1998-2001. This company was in Hosur, my home town. I still remember the engine used to red line for a good 8-10 seconds in 1st gear and then shift to second. Not sure if they ever progressed with that tech. I used to see that bus proudly flaunting AMT - Automatic Manual Gear Box written in 1.5 foot high font on both the sides.

PS - TVS Rambo (later Launched as TVS Victor) was a huge pain the butt for TVS. It was their 1st 4 stroke and they had mountains to climb before they premature engine failure during road tests were overcome. Bangalore guys may remember a Hill temple while crossing Hosur, TVS pledged a huge sum to renovate the Hill Temple if they pulled it off and they did indeed. From then on they have taken a spiritual route to make every product succeed and have adopted 100s of Temples around Hosur and TN, I say to each his own...

But engine making is not every auto makers cup of tea.

[greenhorn]

I think the front page headline "why can't we make our own engines" is creating a bit of confusion - to the folks coming here from the front page - my question is about why we cannot design our own engines. Nobody has any doubt about our capabilities in engine manufacture - we make plenty - My concern was that most of these engines are either licensed designs or designed with substantial foreign input and IP.

I acknowledge there are competent players - TVS especially - had posted this in the original post.
On the other hand Tata feels like a player that has lost its mojo. While it had a string of successes with the 407, Sumo, Safari and indica engines, that ground to a halt with the dicor fiasco and that seems to have turned them off it.
Even maruti gets some credit for trying - the two cylinder diesel (Maruti Celerio Diesel : Official Review) that was created for the celerio, and the Ciaz engine which did well but got killed off by BS6 (Maruti Suzuki killed off its 1.5L diesel engine due to a design flaw)

[Vikash Kumawat]

I am too much curious to know that who is the designer or maker of Mahindra's MHawk and Mstallion engines.
These engines are really capable, refined, powerful and fuel efficient. Infact I have seen that the 2.2 Litre MHawk is the best tune friendly engine, we have seen this engine doing duties in multiple avatars like -
1. Mahindra Thar 2.2 Mhawk - 130 Bhp & 300 Nm with pure off-road capabilities on BOF chassis with proper 4x4 system

2. XUV7OO 2.2 Mhawk - 197 bhp & 380 Nm with AWD and FWD system on Monocoque Chassis

3. Scorpio N base and Scorpio Classic 2.2 - 130 bhp and 300 Nm with regular RWD system on BOF chassis

4. Scorpio N upper variants - 175 bhp & 370 Nm with regular RWD and 4WD on BOF chassis.

[PrasunBannerjee]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Boeing would rather focus on other important matters like cutting corners in the development of a new variant of an old aircraft.

Sorry for going tooooo off topic but this one made me spill coffee on a freshly painted wall. I'll definitely remember this one for years to come whenever I see the wall

[Streetracer_372]

Originally Posted by Vikash Kumawat

I am too much curious to know that who is the designer or maker of Mahindra's MHawk and Mstallion engines.
These engines are really capable, refined, powerful and fuel efficient. Infact I have seen that the 2.2 Litre MHawk is the best tune friendly engine, we have seen this engine doing duties in multiple avatars like -
1. Mahindra Thar 2.2 Mhawk - 130 Bhp & 300 Nm with pure off-road capabilities on BOF chassis with proper 4x4 system

2. XUV7OO 2.2 Mhawk - 197 bhp & 380 Nm with AWD and FWD system on Monocoque Chassis

3. Scorpio N base and Scorpio Classic 2.2 - 130 bhp and 300 Nm with regular RWD system on BOF chassis

4. Scorpio N upper variants - 175 bhp & 370 Nm with regular RWD and 4WD on BOF chassis.

Add to this the fact that we have seen this unit since atleast the late 2000s Scorpio facelift,in various states of tune from around 120Bhp to 180 in the new XUV700. Mahindra must have made considerable changes to the original design from AVL by now. Its still a 50% difference in 15 years which is impressive when you consider that its probably the exact same block.