...ANNUAL REPORT 2010 -11 TECHNO_LOGICAL TECHNO_LOGICAL In many ways, satisfying the Indian customer is probably much more challenging than satisfying a customer in another market. The country has an obsession for fuel efficiency, when it comes to choosing automobiles (and rightly so, since about three-fourths of India’s crude oil requirement is imported). Extracting more mechanical energy for the car from every drop of fuel is a designer’s challenge. But it is vital for the consumer, the economy and the planet. At the same time, a fast growing, young and upwardly mobile, speed conscious India demands pick-up and instant response at the accelerator pedal. There is normally a trade-off between performance and fuel efficiency. A third requirement is space efficiency, as customers want the car to be compact to cope with congestion on roads and parking lots. Yet another requirement is of minimizing emissions. The Company’s next generation, K-series engines employ a plethora of state-of-theart technologies to deliver on all these fronts. Technologies deployed could be as sophisticated as fine atomization to achieve fuel droplet diameter in microns for optimised combustion. Or, they could be as practical as using engineering polymers instead of metal in certain engine parts for weight reduction. Quite like packing more performance in a handheld smartphone as opposed to a traditional laptop. India’s road and dust conditions, the rains and driving safety considerations similarly...
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