Mahindra’s abortive plans to bring its rugged diesel-powered pickups to the US began back in 2007, just as gas prices were starting to run out of control. Now, after years of delays, steadily-increasing prices and general neglect of the compact pickup market have served only to whet our appetite for efficient little developing world-style trucks. Throughout the the last several years, Mahindra has battled with its US distributor, pulled out of other US efforts and generally failed to deliver… all while dangling the dream of a 30 MPG diesel pickup at hopeful enthusiasts. But, as it turns out, Mahindra’s problems don’t end with distribution: though its diesel engine was approved by the EPA, we hadn’t seen EPA confirmation for the long-held 30 MPG goal. Well, the EPA just released the window sticker for the Mahindra TR40 [via MahindraPlanet], a 4X4 four-door version of its 2.2 liter diesel pickup… and it gets nowhere close to 30 MPG.
That’s right, try 19/21 MPG. If you can’t find a rugged, reliable used pickup that will return that kind of mileage all day long, you aren’t trying hard enough. Sure, the two-door version might be more efficient, but will it realistically hit 30 MPG? We doubt it. On the other hand, this disappointing news will help the Mahindra-curious let go of a fantasy that was clearly too good to be true.
What a joke those hwy numbers really stink many full size gas v8 trucks can do that using cheaper fuel, the city isn’t bad but certainly nothing to make it worth consideration.
Yep too good to be true… EcoBoost V6 Ford F150 = 16/22 (on regular “cheap” gas) now which would you buy? 19 mpg city is impressive, but the Mahindra is a strip down trucklet. I bet an EcoBoost Ranger could easily get 18-19 mpg city if the F150 beats gets 16, especially with the right transmission (6 speed manual?)
The 2010 4cyl 5sp Ranger is rated at 19/24/21 By the EPA’s site the cost to drive it 25 miles is $3.07 25% less than the Mahindra’s $4.29. Of course that will vary depending on the gas vs diesel prices in a given area. The best F150 comes in at $3.79 for 25 miles.
My old 1996 Ranger, 4 cyl, 5 spd used to get the same!
The 2010 Ford Ranger with a 4 cylinder / 5 speed manual rating is 22/27 MPG / 24 MPG combined according to the US Govt.
The cost to drive 25 miles is $2.69, which ain’t too shabby for a truck
OldandSlow: I was looking at the middle number of ScoutDude‘s figures. When I had my Ranger, bought used, I routinely got a bit over 24mpg back-and-forth to work and much better than that on the highway. I tried getting rid of that thing more than once, but it refused to give me a good enough reason to do so until my back decided the issue for me, hence, my Impala! If only my truck had the extended cab, I may still be driving it!
I was in a hurry and meant to say 4cyl auto, since at those numbers for the Mahindra are with a 6sp auto. Of course the Ranger is 2wd and the Mahindra is only available as a 4×4 (and auto) at this point. If Ford would build an small say 1.6L – 1.8L (remember when minitrucks had engines that size) Ecoboost 4cyl and a version of the dual clutch 6sp auto I bet they could post MPG ratings well in the 30’s hwy and maybe 25ish in the city. However Americans have pretty much lost their love for true compact pickups so we aren’t going to see that Ranger anytime soon. Also the numbers I quoted for the F150 was for the best 2010 model as that was what I was able to find quickly.
No kidding Ed. Those numbers are really disappointing. The ’07 Dakota Quad Cab with the HO V8 and an automatic got 16 MPG all day while coddling me in heated leather and a bouncy ride. Next!
My ’02 Dak with the older (non HO) V8 get 13 mpg city / 19 hwy.
My 16 was on a mixed commute, mostly secondary roads but with long stretches of 60-70 with the only the to worry about being the occasional deer of flock of turkeys.
Yeah, that’s no damn good. No damn good I tell ya’. I’ve got an ’04 F-150 Super Crew 4×4 with the 5.4 liter, 300hp motor that regularly gets over 20mpg highway. Yes, it falls flat in the city mileage, but still, I’d rather pay for that than be relegated to a 2.2 liter diesel.
Mahindra is screwing up everything as also botching the launch of the Reva (an small EV) in the US too (issues with Bannon).
As for fuel economy – 21 mpg highway is quite low. Not knowing the specifics I would only speculate that the gearing on the trucks are very high for heavy towing and off roading. I cannot believe my 1/2 Silvy with CSO technology and a lower final drive can get the same hwy miles as the Mahindra can.
Is the Mahindra 4×4 full time? This may factor into its mileage if it cannot run in 2wd at all.
The problem with pickup highway figures is that the work of pushing a vehicle with a huge frontal area, a terrible drag coefficient, and relatively large rolling resistance must be done by the engine. It doesn’t really matter if you are using a durable, reliable, and reasonably powerful naturally aspirated gas engine, a complex and short lived turbo, or a diesel small enough to always be working hard. The amount of work being done is always huge, and gaming strategies like small displacement turbos have no real world payoff on the highway because they are forced to operate in the range that they are programmed to avoid in the EPA lab. Mahindra probably doesn’t have the ‘sophistication’ of Ford to make their truck perform better in the lab than it ever will on the road, and buyers would benefit from the real world bias. It is still an old fashioned truck with the frontal area of a bulldozer and the aerodynamics of a parachute.
Secret EPA lab trickery, eh?
On the highway, my 4×4 Suburban bulldozer-parachute gets much better than the EPA estimate (the sticker figure) which is 20 MPG. In fact, at 25 MPG I come very close to the EPA’s internal “lab” figure of 26 MPG. And 25 MPG is a hand-calculated number from a 3400-mile round-trip to West Texas and back, all highway. (The engine computer was significantly more pessimistic, claiming I only managed 21 MPG, somehow.)
I haven’t hand-calculated my city mileage, but my computer usually shows about 16, which is still marginally better than the sticker value of 15 MPG, and very close to the “unadjusted” or “lab” figure of 17 MPG. And if the city MPG computations are as wildly inaccurate as the highway figures, I probably exceed the EPA numbers by a wide margin.
And for the record, my driving habits are probably among the worst in terms of mileage. I have no doubt I could easily far exceed those figures if I cared about such things.
Granted, we can while away the afternoon discussing whether those figures are “good enough” or not, but my point was to question the conspiracy-theory angle of your comment. Maybe Mahindra’s engineering just sucks.
I used to have access to 3 2008(maybe 2007, but I think the registrations all said 2008) 2WD Suburbans with 5.3 liter V8s and 4-speed automatics. The display under the speedometer gave me all sorts of numbers, but I had to refuel them at Shell and record mileage before I returned them. I never got near 20 mpg, and half the time I just drove up the I5 from San Diego to LAX and back at speeds slower than I’d ever drive my own car. Admittedly Shell gas is ‘nitrogen charged’ here, which is an inert gas and probably about as useful as a styrofoam burito filling, but I wonder just how much the 6 speed could help. What we really need to do is stop putting stuff other than gasoline in our gasoline. I’ve recorded every gallon of gas I’ve purchased since 1994 and my cars do at least 10% better on every tank of real gasoline than they do on gasohol.
This is what happens with every single supposed mileage-champeen diesel vehicle that comes to the US. Maybe it’s time to start taking diesel claims with a bit more salt, huh?
Hmmm. A stroll through the EPA numbers shows that the diesel pickups of the early ’80s got mid-20s city and low-30s highway (under the current regimen, presumably). The 4wds were about 5 mpg worse, though.
I think we are seeing diesels go though the same power- and mileage-robbing emission hobbling that gas engines had in the ’70s.
I agree that our diesel emissions requirements waste fuel, but that is only part of what is hurting the numbers. Pickups weighed 40% less in the ’80s, and you need to make sure that you’re comparing EPA numbers with the same adjustments used on new ones. The actual tests used for CAFE are the same, but the published numbers have changed significantly because of consumer frustration with vehicles unable to approach the EPA’s ridiculous lab figures.
One again, we’re looking at the wrong number. Any car—even a pickup—can get good highway miles with aero tweaks, throttle programming and the right gearing. Especially when we’re talking about the EPA cycle.
This begs two questions: One, what does that V8 F-150 get in the city? Because 16mpg EPA is a far cry from the 8-12mpg I’ve seen these things get. Two, if you’re drive is mostly long stretches of highway that allow you to get 30mpg in a (likely-unladen) truck why do you own a truck in the first place?
I mean, fair’s fair: if we’re going to nail this for highway mileage, let’s criticize half-tons and super-duties for how hard they are to parallel-park.
I don’t mind these, and I think the criticism misses the point. These aren’t family trucksters like a crew cab or even general-purpose do-all work trucks; they’re pure, simple and above all, urban, work trucks of the kind TTACers seem to pine for. What determines how well they do (or don’t) do is what they’re priced at: if Mahindra can get well under the price of the current Ranger I think they’ll do well enough to carve out a small niche.
I don’t think they’ll succeed, though, because despite what people say they want (small, efficient, blah, blah), what they actually buy a million per year of are tall-ridin’, high-bed, big-hood, lil’ BigFoots.
” if we’re going to nail this for highway mileage, let’s criticize half-tons and super-duties for how hard they are to parallel-park.
The difference is that the makers of the super-duties didn’t advertise how easy they were to parallel park. Mahindra did advertise that its trucks would get 30 mpg.
“why do you own a truck in the first place?”
Two answers to this one. First answer: mind your own business. I’ll drive what I want. Second answer. If I only want to own one vehicle and occasionally need to tow/haul, a truck is the only reasonable answer.
I went to a ride and drive event for the new F-150 a couple of months ago. Part of the event was taking an EcoBoost F-150 around a public road test circuit to see real world fuel economy. Driving in moderate traffic (including some stop and go) around SeaWorld in Orlando most of us were averaging around 17-19 mpg. While we were trying to drove with a bit of a light foot, looking ahead for stoplights and braking intelligently, we weren’t hypermiling (one guy who was, doing things like turning off the A/C, shutting off the engine to coast, etc, got 24mpg). The economy you get will obviously be determined by how you drive, but the new F-150s with the six speed autos are a big improvement over the 2008 and before 4 speed trucks, and the new 2011 powertrains are a big improvement over the old V8 range.
if you’re drive is mostly long stretches of highway that allow you to get 30mpg in a (likely-unladen) truck why do you own a truck in the first place?
My drive routinely includes unladen highway trips in the vicinity of 100 miles. I’d say about 1/3 of the usage my truck gets is on the highway, empty (can’t for example, haul a load of gravel or soil both ways). So, yeah, highway mileage is an issue for me. The higher, the better.
How about a 1984 GMC 4×4 with a 6.2L diesel? 17 city/ 20 highway I understand that pickups are geared for hauling and have poor aerodynamics, but the Mahindra mileage is mediocre, especially considering the cost of diesel.
Disregarding the absolute numbers involved, I’m curious as to the small (≈10%) spread between “city” and “highway” figures. It seems most vehicles see a 20-30% spread. My guess is a very low final drive ratio, meaning the little oil burner is working pretty close to capacity at all times.
I was thinking along the same lines. Since aerodynamic issues don’t significantly affect the “city” number, there’s got to be some mechanical reason the highway number is so relatively low. If it’s as simple as rear end gearing, that’s an easy fix.
Yes, and according to the screen capture shown above, you can get a Sneak Peak of the truck during their Tour Across America.
Grammar mistakes are indicators of other sloppiness. Does it extend to their products as well?
Did they borrow axles from their tractors to get those numbers? Perhaps a two speed rear and transmission from a semi are needed?
While the MPG numbers aren’t all that promising, I’d still like a smaller rig with lots of low end torque for towing or going over mountain passes. That’s where diesel engines are ideal.
But if you do that with this truck you’ll be getting worse mileage than a fullsize hauling the same load, since the Mahindra will be working at capacity and the same weight will result in a larger drop in MPG in the smaller truck see jogrd’s response below.
Needs a gas engine.
Pretty much reflects my experience with 4cyl pickups. I was a forester for a long time and I always bought 4cyl Toyota 4x4s as I considered them the best truck available at the time for off highway use. Once they were loaded down with a snowmobile or quad they got about 15 mpg. You had to be in second gear at 4000 rpm to climb a logging road. I reluctantly switched to an F150 as they local Toyota dealers became too arrogant to deal with . I actually got better mileage under the same conditions with the F150 since the truck was not straining at all with the load since it had the power to keep the rev’s down. Same with maintenance, the F150 was under a lot less stress doing the same tasks and broke a lot less.
So it’s Soviet era East Euro ugly and gets disappointing fuel econ.
Something tells me it won’t be bargain priced either?
Wait, is Mahindra seriously going to bring out the truck? Really?
That mileage is absolutely terrible. Ford just recently released mileage figures on the F-150. In 2wd with base 3.7 V6, it’s got over 300 hp, yet gets… 17/23 mpg. With 4×4, the F-150 gets… 16/21 mpg.
In other words, you can get a 2wd F-150 and beat the Mahindra’s highway mileage by 2 mpg, and end up losing 2 mpg city. Or you can get a 4×4, still get that highway mileage.
I doubt they’ll be able to sell any at MSRP with that kind of mileage, even if it’s significantly cheaper than the full-size offerings.
A local man owns a couple of them. At first, I thought they were pristine Japanese trucks from the 1970’s but they are way worse. For one thing, the proportions are odd and the styling is absolutely hideous. They must have been on crack when they designed these things. I can’t imagine them ever catching on in Middle America. Cops should pull these things over and cite them for “cruelty to eyesight”! No other vehicle has ever tested my gag reflex like this hunk of junk. PUKE!
I am sorry very much for the misunderstanding. We in India use the kilometers, who knew your American miles we so much longer!
It’s unfortunate that we have no EPA numbers for the 3/4-ton and 1-ton diesel trucks. It would be interesting to see how much the mileage figures have fallen with the new emission standards. I’ve heard the fuel economy is now very poor.
My ’97 Ranger, 4cyl. 5-speed gets consistent 20-22 in the city in above freezing weather when the AC is off. In really cold weather or with AC on in summer it gets 18-20. It’s been years since I took it on the open road, but the last time I did it got 24.
As the only complaint I have about the Ranger’s overall design is that the cab is a bit narrow, these Indian trucks would not interest me even if the mileage was better.