Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile company with revenues of $8.8 billion in 2007-08, which commenced its new manufacturing plant at Dharwad in January this year has achieved a production level of 650 buses per month and it plans to ramp up to 1,250-1,300 buses per month in the next couple of months. The company’s installed capacity at Dharwad plant is 15,000 units per annum and it makes only light buses below 12 tonne gross vehicle weight.
Sandeep Kumar, Head-sales & marketing, buses & SCV passenger, Tata Motors said the company aims to sell 12,000 buses in the domestic market and the remaining 3,000 buses in export markets.
A 51:49 joint venture between Tata Motors and the Brazil-based Marcopolo, Tata Marcopolo Motors Ltd. has been set up at an investment of around Rs 200 crore. The Dharwad plant has started with an initial capacity of 15,000 units per annum, and this will be increased to 30,000 units per year in phases.
The company plans to produce a wide range of buses at Tata Marcopolo’s plant, including the ‘Starbus’ and ‘Globus’ ranges. The plant is currently producing 30-seater buses, which are mostly favoured by call centres and BPOs, Kumar said.
Speaking to reporters at the first international bus and special vehicles expo organised by ACMA, CII and SIAM, here today, he said the company has received encouraging response for its just launched luxury inter-city bus under a technical collaboration with Spanish company, Hispano. The company, since the launch of this luxury bus in January 2009, has sold 50 buses and aims to sell around 250 buses in 2009-10, he said.
For the year ending March 2009, Tata Motors expects overall bus sales to stay at 2008 levels and during the 11 month period ending February of the current fiscal, the company has sold 25,500 buses. However, during the next fiscal it expects to grow by 10-15 per cent mainly driven by orders under Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, he added.
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He said during the next one year, the company will deliver another 1,650 low-floor buses to Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC).
It has already supplied 650 buses to DTC. The total order size is 2,500 buses, of which 625 are air conditioned buses.
Sandeep Kumar said the company has introduced a bus tracking and passenger information system, trako MyBus Solution, in its buses. Currently, the pilot project is going on in 140 buses in Delhi and five buses in Mysore. Once the pilot project completes successful run, it will be introduced as a standard fitment in all buses, he said.
The system is developed in-house by Tata Autocomp Systems, a Tata group company. The solution is designed for inter-city or intra-city mass transit operators, which offers GPS based real time bus tracking to operators and provides estimated time of arrival of buses at enroute bus stops via web portal, mobile phone and on electronic information displays (LED) at bus stops for passenger comfort. This solution provides a very simple user friendly web interface available at https://bsmedia.business-standard.commybustrako.in to bus operators to track single or multiple bus fleet being fitted with trako GPS device.
The company has priced it at Rs 8,000 per unit and is also available in the auto aftermarket. It can be installed in any bus, Kumar added.