Daimler India Commercial Vehicles lays foundation stone for new bus plant

  • Mar 6, 2014
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Daimler Commercial vehicles has laid the ceremonial foundations for what would be their new BharatBenz and Mercedes-Benz bus plant

New Daimler India Bus plant foundation ceremony

  

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) has officially laid the foundation stone for its brand new bus manufacturing unit at its Oragadam plant near Chennai. The Oragadam factory is shared with the BharatBenz truck and engine manufacturing factory and Daimler India’s state of the art commercial vehicle testing facility.

The new unit is spread across 27.9 acres and will be within the current DICV facility. The new bus plant will manufacture a host of different configurations like front and rear engine busses. The new busses will be available in nine tonne, 16 tonnes and over 16 tonnes configuration with both front and rear engine options. The front-engined busses will be manufactured under the BharatBenz brand whereas the more premium rear-engined passenger carriers will be badged as Mercedes-Benz busses.

Speaking on the occasion, Wolfgang Bernhard, Daimler AG board member for trucks and busses said, “On the basis of our strong truck business, we are now pressing ahead on the Indian bus market. For that purpose, we are consistently using existing suppliers, our production site and our sales network in India.” Markus Villinger, Head, Daimler Busses India, also mentioned how there would be about 300 employees dedicated to the Daimler bus factory while emplying additional expertise from the BharatBenz side of operations.

Daimler bus plant foundation stone

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles has allotted an initial investment of Rs 425 crore for the new facility, which will be operational in the second quarter 2015. After the completion of the new factory, the Oragadam Daimler Commercial Vehicle plant will be the only Daimler plant in the world to produce trucks, busses and engines in the same facility. The new bus plant will have an initial capacity of 1500 vehicles with a provision of extending that number to 4000 if demands increase.

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles has confirmed that the level of localisation in their bus platforms will be extremely high for the front-engined variants and moderately high for their rear-engined busses thereby drastically bringing costs down. DICV hinted at a price point that was 25 per cent cheaper than competition which would make them a favourite with the highly price conscious Indian customer. DICV also mentioned how their target customers were private sector players like school bus operators, company bus operators and intercity bus operators. DICV also stated how they would initially not want to supply busses to state or central governments and concentrate only on the private sector.


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