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The Power Solutions Business of Ashok Leyland has introduced 20 prototypes of engines complying with the upcoming emission norms. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Rajesh R, Vice President, Power Solutions Business, Ashok Leyland </span>shares more on the market and the company's plans.<p></p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preparing for new emission norms: </span>In the power solutions business, we address four verticals: power generation, industrial, agriculture and marine. The agricultural and industrial businesses are shifting to the next level emission norms of BS IV (CEV) starting from October 2020. The automotive sector is moving towards BS VI starting April 2020 and we have done a lot of rigorous experiments with the products we wanted to bring in for BS VI. It is a natural migration for Ashok Leyland to BS IV (CEV) from using the same BS VI platform. We have made over 20 prototypes well in advance on the latest emission norms. These are already running in for different equipment across the complete gamut of the equipment industry today. </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Market opportunities:</span> As there are a lot of investments expected in infrastructure development, in the coming years, the market is going to bounce back from the current slowdown. We are very well geared up to meet the growing demands of the market. We are also equipped ourselves with expanding our capacities in our plants to address the new opportunities and the requirements. </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Major challenges: </span>The power generation and industrial segments have been slowed down because of the economic situation in India. However, we are doing an all-time high sales in agricultural equipment segment in India, because of the good monsoon season this year. We cater to almost 95 per cent of the market requirements in agricultural equipment. Moving forward, we expect the industrial and power generation business to bounce back. But on a growing phase, the generators will be a stand-by application rather than prime because of the improved grid power availability.</p><p>In the construction and mining equipment industry, the challenge would be the roll out of the BS IV (CEV), because the engines that are currently working on mechanical platform will move on to electronics platform with a lot of sensors. This is going to be a big cost challenge for the equipment industry. The challenge with respect to the availability of fuel and also the cleanliness of the fuel that put into the machine is a concern. </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Changing designs and components: </span>For engines of less than 56 kW, we may just require a diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC). Beyond this, we may have to use a separate selective catalytic reduction (SCR). But these SCRs are closed loop and we may not be required to use a diesel particulate filter (DPF) or DOC for that. So there is no major difference between the automotive BS VI and the BS IV (CEV). The remarks levels are exactly the same while the particulate level is slightly less stringent on the BS IV (CEV). </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Supporting productivity with technology and services:</span> Productivity is directly related to the equipment uptime. We are spread across in India with 150 touch-points across the industry and have extensive knowledge of handling the new generation engines. We have the training programme based on &quot;KNOW&quot;, Knowledge on Wheels as we take the training centre right into the equipment manufacturers and also the service centres. We train them with the new generation engines right at their place. On the smart features, we have a solution called iAlert which is an optional device fitted on the equipment which provides data about how the machine behaves. We measure three things: amount of coolant, oil and fuel. Data analytics is going to be the next biggest network in India. So we are going to collect all the data and this will be used for understanding the equipment usage in the market. </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Expansion plans: </span>In construction equipment industry we are far ahead on the development part with BS IV (CEV) engines. We are also setting up additional assembly plants to enhance our capacities to address the growing demand in the market. </p><p></p>