Team-BHP - Tata Altroz DCT Automatic, now launched at Rs. 8.09 lakh

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Rationalist (Post 5268917)

Whoever has decided against giving DCT in the turbo petrol variant is a rank idiot! A person ready to buy an automatic won’t be bothered much about another lakh or so for the same in turbo variant. Extremely disappointed, here goes my plan of buying Altroz down the drain. My current automatic has 110 bp and 140 nm torque, I don’t think the NA motor with DCT can match the power of my current one. So it will be a lethargic downgrade in terms of performance!

In my opinion - its a game of market positioning. A company even as lazy as TaMo won't be stupid enough to restrict the fast DCT to an 85PS engine. It might be the least powerful DCT equipped car in most countries.

Probably the 1.2NA DCT will establish a price, slowly settling the car in a zone. 1.2 Turbo will arrive slightly later with a significant price hike over the current 1.2 Turbo MT, but since the 1.2NA DCT will have set the lower price bar at a new threshold - the hike on 1.2 T won't appear huge. Launch a 1.2T DCT directly today - and it will appear like a scary price bump over the current MT.

At the same time - the pricing will have to get slowly pushed up, to combine with the regular "edition" related price hikes in the Tata Nexon - so that the Tata Nexon DCT can be launched later on. Otherwise the Nexon AMT will look absolutely stupid. I suspect all of these coming together - is what results in just the 1.2NA being launched in step 1. I'm looking forward to the 1.2 Turbo DCT. In case my mid-life crisis gets the better of me - it might be the last ICE hatchback I buy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turrrb0 (Post 5269232)

DCT is the wrong transmission if this is the use case they are targeting, they are widely known to not work the best in traffic conditions.
CVT or TC AT would have been the right choice. TATA product planners should definitely be given an award.

I have absolutely no real information - but from what was being discussed elsewhere in the forum I believe Tata was working on a wet-clutch setup. Is that true? If yes - I don't think it will have a lot of issues in heavy traffic conditions. Generally the issues prop up in dry-clutch DCTs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reinhard (Post 5269443)

Well, neither do I, and yes, the wet clutch DCT has lesser issues being reported.

But it is still a rather complex piece of kit for a commuter car purpose, no? Why risk it?

Maybe an AMT or CVT for the 1.2NA and the DCT for the iturbo and TC AT for the diesel. Am sure TML is no small player and could've worked out / arranged transmission options like this. This could've been scaled up to the Punch and Nexon too, allowing for quantity to offset some of the cost. The latter two pulling in big numbers for TML and those segments seeing buyers favor automatics too.

IMO TATA should be trying to beat Hyundai at its game, and they can, if they wanted to. Shame.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turrrb0 (Post 5269464)

IMO TATA should be trying to beat Hyundai at its game, and they can, if they wanted to. Shame.

Honestly - If I were Tata - I'd have launched the Altroz 1.2 NA with AMT already at the time of original launch. The car would have sold far higher than it did so far. As the Baleno will prove now - there are a huge amount of takers for the AMT who have no problem with how it behaves (I myself own an AMT and find it ok for the intended usage pattern.)

And then - the 1.2 Turbo could have been offered later on with a fast DCT. In offering a DCT with the 1.2 NA - TaMo has practically shot itself in the foot - and then Maruti has shot it in the head - launching a peer car with a downgrade - AMT instead of existing CVT :D.
Launching the 1.2 NA AMT 1 year ago - would have been 0 investment job. The engine and GB - are already integrated with the Tiago, so it was a simple lift-n-shift (per se).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venkatesh (Post 5269409)

Tata Motors opens bookings for the Altroz DCA (Dual Clutch Automatic).

Booking amount Rs 21,000 and deliveries to start from mid-March 2022.

More Information

- Altroz DCA (Dual Clutch Automatic) as it will use a double clutch gearbox with wet-clutch technology.

- Tata Motors has also confirmed that the Altroz DCA will be sold in XT, XZ and the XZ+ variants along with a separate dark edition line-up.

- Altroz DCA will only come with the 86hp, 1.2-litre petrol engine and not the more powerful 1.2-litre turbo-petrol option.

Source

I feel there are two things at play here -
Firstly, TaMo wants to test the market reaction to pricing and adoption, and doing so with 1.2NA is a safer option as they can easily revise the prices when they launch the DCA with the turbo-petrol.
Secondly, I think TaMo will want to launch the DCA with turbo for the Nexon before the Altroz. And might even bring the Nexon tune turbo petrol to the Altroz, and is probably delayed due to inadequate testing.
Just hoping that TaMo gets this release right with respect to the reliability of the gearbox and the overall call, as this will ensure quick and smooth launches of other variants expected.

The whole 'testing the waters' theory makes little sense. If it's expensive today, it isn't going to get any cheaper by waiting.

Altroz has been in the market for 2 years now, and even back then it took them ages to get from reveal to launch. The turbo petrol wasn't offered at launch, and we kept hearing murmurs of an impending turbo petrol + DCT powertrain, which hasn't materialized yet, once again consigned to the rumor bin for a potential future launch.

Plenty of people argued they were hampering Altroz to protect Nexon, but that car is still trundling along with an AMT too, so isn't exactly getting top-notch equipment either.

Hyundai just plonked the DCT in i20 Sportz trim to counter the refreshed Baleno, and VW of all brands managed to shift the 1.2 TSi + 7DCT combo in decent numbers several years in a row.

If Tata are waiting for some indeterminate point in the future where an exciting powertrain will be justifiable, that time is now or never. The market doesn't wait.

Pull the finger out Tata, before competitors corner the whole premium AT hatch market.

Despite of the foolish decisions which everyone here is echoing, Tata seems to be raking in the good numbers in sales. Altroz is doing decent numbers without an automatic whereas Nexon is already at the top of the chart with just an AMT. Even before the turbo was launched Altroz was doing decent numbers.

So looking at the customer base which Tata is targeting, these customers will accept this combination also with open arms and there will be linear growth in the sales as well in months to come.

This does not discount the fact that with a proper engine gearbox combination this product had a much higher potential, a point Tata is somehow missing.

Tata is just aiming to give average joe an opportunity to brag that his car has DCA, in actuality it won't have any substantial benefit nor will the user expect a pocket rocket.

It's only us enthusiasts which will continue to fret.

This DCT should ultimately find its way into Nexon as well as Punch, apart from Altroz. It is a matter of common sense that we will see this engine mated with the turbo 1.2 in the future. If not in Altroz then in Nexon, but it will happen. The sooner they do this, the better. This transmission has been under testing for a long time now.

Tata has been unnecessarily conservative in its approach towards powertrains of late. Cannibalisation between your own products and powertrains is a good thing. Just look at Hyundai. Everything from 12L to 20L gets the same sets of engines and gearboxes. Full variety of options to the customer.

Let's wait and see how the NA AT behaves. While it may look logical that the Turbo avatar should have got the AT, some of the comments here make me wonder if folks know better than Tata. May be someday we will know why they chose the NA for the AT version.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reinhard (Post 5269469)

Honestly - If I were Tata - I'd have launched the Altroz 1.2 NA with AMT already at the time of original launch..

We keep lamenting about the shortcomings of the AMT's and we want proper ATs. And you say they should have launched the AMT. If they had, then followed it up with an AT - the development costs would have been been incurred twice. This would have only pushed the price even higher, or Tata would have had to bear losses on the two rounds of development costs.