Developing the right damping characteristics for any passenger vehicle, commercial truck or bus requires creating a precise combination of art, science and customer engagement. To create ride and handling solutions for the specific needs of our global customers, the DRiV Ride Performance team uses mobile ride tuning laboratories that leverage the expertise of our development engineers and an ever-growing range of innovative valve technologies.  In India, one of the world’s fastest growing transportation markets, the Ride Performance team is taking these technologies directly to OE customers through an expanding fleet of highly advanced mobile ride tuning labs. 

India’s first customer-facing ride performance resource was a small ride tuning van, first introduced in March 2009, and then refreshed with a larger tuning bus in January 2013.  Based on the clear success of this concept – which enables OE engineers to be directly involved in the tuning process – DRiV recently launched a new advanced mobile lab, called the DRiV Ride Tuning Truck, which features an extensive inventory of the latest valve designs along with all of the equipment needed to assemble, measure and test vehicle-specific dampers.

This new truck, a BharatBenz tractor and custom-outfitted 12.5-meter trailer, will take DRiV’s ride tuning expertise directly to OE customer locations, test tracks and other remote sites for intensive vehicle tuning sessions.  Using the mobile labs, DRiV engineers can quickly test multiple changes to a vehicle’s damping characteristics, working closely with our customer engineers every step of the way. A conference room and other amenities help ensure OE customers are fully engaged in the process of finding precisely the right damping characteristics for their latest vehicle models.

“Developing the right ride and handling characteristics for any new model is a very collaborative exercise,” said Miller Selvakumar, Engineering Director India.  “Our Ride Tuning Bus and new Ride Tuning Truck send an important message to OE customers – DRiV is committed to working in partnership with them to drive advancements in ride performance for every vehicle.”News Article content

The ribbon cutting for the new mobile tuning lab was done done by Mr. Anup Maheshwari – GM, Supply Chain Maruti Suzuki, Mr. Amardeep Singh – GM Engineering Maruti Suzuki, and Mr. R C Subramaniam – DRiV GM RC India