JOIN USVolvo Eicher (VE) Commercial Vehicles, the commercial vehicle and truck manufacturing JV between Sweden’s Volvo Group and homegrown Eicher Motors, has plans to grow its Eicher truck portfolio and cater to more specialised requirements.
Until now, Eicher’s trucks included five to 49-tonne vehicles, which were used for a few mining and construction applications. VE Commercial Vehicles will now launch a new range of superior trucks at the premium construction equipment fair EXCON 2015 in Bengaluru, on Thursday, which are aimed at tougher applications like deep mining.
The new range consists of three products in the 25-, 31- and 40-tonne capacities, respectively, under the new Pro range — Pro 6000 and Pro 8000. While the Pro 6000 offers a value proposition, the Pro 8000 range is placed in the mid-premium category.
“Until now, we largely sold haulage trucks and tippers, utilised mainly for basic applications. We have now added a new range to our portfolio, providing the entire gamut of various industry needs, from value to premium products (the premium products being offered by JV partner Volvo’s stable),” VE Commercial Vehicles Chief Executive Officer Vinod Aggarwal told Deccan Herald.
Referring to the competition and the differentiator for Eicher, he said, “We must add differences on our products and aftermarket services. We are committing profitability to customers by offering more lifetime for our products, with superior uptime, through on-site servicing. While fuel efficiency accounts for over 50 per cent of all operating costs of trucks and heavy vehicles, we assure at least 7-15 per cent guaranteed increase in mileage.”
While the company is bullish on the mining sector that has taken off in recent times, it has also set itself for an expected spurt in the construction field, which has remained dormant over the last few years.
“The industry was in recession between 2012 and 2014, after which the five tonne-plus commercial vehicles segments took off by 25 per cent. Within this, trucks catering to construction have not grown reasonably, since infrastructure investment is quite low. But we see huge potential to grow in this realm as well, since a lot of road projects are in the pipeline,” Aggarwal said.
Meanwhile, the Pro 6000 range, will be manufactured at the facility at Pithampur, while the Pro 8000 range will be made at Volvo’s Hoskote facility.