On October 21, Dürr announced that it is building two paint shops for Sinotruk, the leading manufacturer of heavy trucks.
The two paint shops for the Sinotruk subsidiaries Ji’nan Truck and Ji’nan Commercial Vehicle are being built in Laiwu and Zhangqiu in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong. Dürr’s automated guided vehicles (AGVs for short) are an important building block for a flexible plant layout. EcoProFleet was developed specifically for use in paint shops and is already in use in passenger car production. At Sinotruk, this flexible conveyor technology will now transport truck cabs for the first time.
In order to achieve top quality and efficiency in the application, Sinotruk relies on the latest robot technology. In each of the two paint shops, two EcoRS sealing robots from Dürr seal the inner seams and another two apply liquid sound deadener in a fully automatic process. The base coat and clear coat in each paint shop are applied by 19 of the latest generation of EcoRP painting robots, which are equipped with EcoBell3 high rotation atomizers.
For Sinotruk, Dürr is installing a fully automatic quality control station. Here, a robot follows defined checkpoints on the truck cabs and uses sensors to record data about colour variations, surface texture, and layer thickness. Outside of the painting process, end-of-line testing technology is also from Dürr. Dürr convinced Sinotruk of the accuracy and efficiency of its testing technology, so the manufacturer also ordered additional test stands for another plant in Zhangqiu in August 2021. The production plant for light trucks will use the x-wheel wheel alignment stand with the latest x-3Dsurface measurement technology and the multifunctional roll, brake and ABS test stand x-road medium truck. The Sinotruk plants are scheduled to start production in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

Dürr press release

On October 18, Tata Motors launched sub-compact SUV Punch in India at a starting price of INR 549 thousand. It is the first SUV built on ALFA-ARC (Agile Light Flexible Advanced Architecture), developed under Impact 2.0 design language.
It comes with a 1.2 Revotron BS-VI gasoline engine that develops 86 PS power and 113 Nm of torque and is mated to a 5-speed AMT / manual transmission. It also offers iRA connected car technology with What3Words and natural voice tech. Its “Brake Sway Control” detects the tendency of instability during abrupt braking before the ABS kicks in to avoid vehicle swaying from the driving path. It has Infotainment System with 7” high-resolution-display by Harman.

Tata Motors press release

On October 14, Global NCAP announced that the Tata Punch has achieved a five-star rating for adult occupant protection and four stars for child occupant protection in its latest crash tests. The Tata Punch was tested in the most basic safety specification, fitted with two airbags, ABS brakes and ISOFIX anchorages. For adult occupant protection, the car passes the UN95 side impact test, it has front passengers SBR that pass the requirements and it offers standard ABS (4 channel). The bodyshell was rated as stable and it was capable of withstanding further loadings. The footwell area was rated as stable. The protection offered to the driver and passenger was good.
The child seat for the 3-year-old and 1.5-year-old was installed rearward facing with ISOFIX connectors and support leg. The CRS was able to prevent excessive forward movement during the impact and offered good protection to the head and chest of both dummies. The recommended CRS did not show incompatibility. The vehicle offers a lap belt in the rear centre position. The car has standard ISOFIX anchorages.
The Punch can be improved by equipping the model with standard Electronic Stability Control (ESC), side head impact protection systems as standard, and 3-point belts in all seating positions.

Global NCAP press release