Story & Photos: Bhargav TS
Scania Commercial Vehicles India Pvt. Ltd., with over 127 years of global history in mobility solutions, has launched its Next Truck Generation (NTG), to drive the shift towards sustainable transport solutions in the mining industry. With its unique modular system, NTG will deliver productivity-enhancing services as well as customised transport solutions.
Petr Novotny, Managing Director, Scania India, unveiled the new range of NTG at the Scania’s Kolar plant in Karnataka and said, “India is an important market for us and we are here to stay. The strategic introduction of Scania’s world-class range reiterates our commitment to the country. With the launch of the NTG range, we aim to drive the evolution of India’s transport solutions in the Mining, Construction and Long Haulage Business. We reinforce our commitment to helping customers achieve higher levels of profitability, safety, efficiency and productivity in their businesses. We are confident that these strategic initiatives will further support the growth of mining industry in India and strengthen Scania India’s growth story.”
NTG is BS VI ready and is integrated with an upgraded powertrain, resulting in higher load carrying capacity, fuel efficiency and uptime.
“Globally our NTG has won many awards. We are excited to launch these state-of-the art trucks in India to support the growing mining industry. Very soon we shall also be introducing NTG for Long Haulage business. As part of our core value of ‘customer first’, this generation of trucks is designed better to meet their requirements of increasing profitability. Inspired by our commitment to sustainability, NTG has efficiency in both fuel economy and performance. The new range of trucks will contribute to India’s ambition of becoming a sustainable nation”, he added.
NTG comes with excellent features and benefits which include higher load carrying capacity, better uptime, more durable and highest levels of safety and driver comfort. Scania has adapted various service plans to fit the customer’s operational needs like Site Optimisation, Uptime improvement, Repairs and Proactive Maintenance in an effort to offer end-to-end solutions.
Globally, Scania works towards developing greater levels of sustainability, focusing on energy efficiency, alternative fuels and electrification, and smart and safe transport, utilising increasing levels of digital services to provide higher uptime and vehicle utilization.
Stronger components
Scania, globally and in India, will develop and build many products on NTG platform. According to the Scania India spokesperson, “Our Scania NTG comes with 40% stronger components like gearbox and axle gears and they will increase the mean time between failure resulting in a better up time to our customers. Also our services like site optimisation and driver coaching will eliminate inefficiencies. We talked about stronger components, but we can also mention the heavier suspension we have and the extensive fuel testing we have done in this truck for more than 3 years. And based on these exhaustive trials in various mining conditions we are convinced that this truck is built to last longer than any truck in a similar application in India.”
Scania has worked extensively to incorporate several new components in the NTG heavy tipper. Some of the new components include, the front and rear axles and suspension, transmission system which includes gearbox, rear axle transmission and propeller shaft. NTG heavy tipper has a stronger front axle with technical weight of 11 ton. It also has a reinforced axle beam and steering knuckle improving turning radius. This is complemented with a 5-leaf parabolic spring suspension with new steel spring bushes and progressive bump stops for reduced stress on spring and frame.
The new Opticruise gearbox is 40% stronger than the previous version available. This gearbox has the highest input torque with handling capacity of 3500 Nm. The rear axle of NTG heavy tipper is also made 40% stronger with increased dimensions on many components, reinforced 65mm propeller shaft and stronger hub gears. The stronger rear bogie suspension with 5 parabolic leaves 100 mm wide each, complements the rear axle performance further.
The new gearbox range with layshaft brake has multiple benefits like improved upshift performance, improved synchronizer life length, reduced PTO engagement time and reduced reverse and crawler engagement time. It is developed to meet the customer’s demand on a premium product regarding the gearshift speed and comfort. This further enables the driver to reach the demanded torque faster.
The gearshifts in the Scania opticruise is programmed for driving tippers in 3 modes – off-road, power and standard. As per the driving conditions, the driver is free to select the most suitable mode for optimum traction and uphill driving performance. The new Opticruise gearbox introduced with NTG has a new paddle shift gear lever. The paddle shift is now integrated with exhaust brake for manual operations in 2 steps. With these new features in the Opticruise gearbox, the drivers can now control the loaded vehicle more easily.
The Scania XT (Extra Tough) truck in India comes with its characteristic frontal design, with the solid steel bumper, the black grill and scratch resistant rear view mirrors, as well as the headlamp protection. This definitely makes it stand out in any crowd. It also comes with an integrated tow pin for up to 40 ton which is the highest in the Indian market. Other features that add to robustness and safety are the new heavy duty rear axles, the high air intake as well as the all new G cabin.
Safety features
As Scania emphasises more on safety, for the first time the company has brought in a more efficient big braking system than the previous one by increasing the size of the brake shoes by 50%. The front axle position is also shifted forward to improve braking efficiency. This improves stopping distance to up to 2m. The standard position of the front axle has been moved 50mm closer to the front. Among other things, this creates a shorter overhang and reduces the degree of kneeling under heavy braking. Also for the first time Scania has increased the ply rating of tyre to 20 PR for better load handling capacity.
Scania’s new truck range is now the safest with roll-over side curtain bags. The most serious type of accidents for truck drivers are when the vehicle overturns during an evasive maneuver, when taking a bend too fast or when the truck doesn’t stop quickly enough. Scania has enhanced both active and passive safety in the new truck range with a number of features that will protect those inside the cab and other road users. By introducing roll-over side curtain airbags, Scania estimates that the number of drivers killed in roll-over accidents worldwide could potentially be reduced by 45%. This feature can be made available in India based on customer requirements.
Further, the new cabs have been designed and tested to cope with Sweden’s tough impact testing despite the fact that it is no longer the legal requirement in which the same cab is tested in 3 different scenarios to simulate a roll-over accident.
“In India, we know that there are a lot of head-on collisions that can happen and cabin strength plays important role in the driver’s safety and for that our Scania NTG has to fulfill very stringent crash tests. All of these will make our truck the safest in mining in India. Our new cabs provide an economical design and air suspension that ensures the driver fatigue is minimised and it has got 40% increased cooling capacity, which is the most ideal for a hot Indian summer. The new tipper cabin is also designed to have better driver visibility due to improvements like slimmer A pillar, higher driver position, lowered instrument panel and driver seat position moved forward,” the spokesperson said.
Scania has proven its driveline and tippers in the tough Indian mining conditions over the last 10 years. It has extended this offering for the equally demanding operation of the infrastructure segment. The box body option is suitable to carry sand, aggregate or blue metal materials for various earth movement applications within dam projects, lift irrigation projects and road construction projects. ACI
