The Hindu Business Line : TVS forays into three-wheeler segment; rolls out 7 vehicles

Hosur, Aug. 30 TVS Motor Company today rolled out seven vehicles, including three variants of its new three-wheeler, marking its foray into the segment.

The products are expected to be launched in a phased manner between October and November this year and prices will be announced prior to the launch.

Fortunes to change

At a function branded Dhoom 7, in its Rs 125-crore new three-wheeler plant in Hosur, the company’s Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Venu Srinivasan, said the fourth quarter of this fiscal will witness a changed TVS with many more aggressive and focused products. The change will also reflect in the company’s fortunes, he said.

In the previous financial year, the company’s bottomline took a hit due to rising marketing input and cost. He said the economy is growing at about 9 per cent and the automobile industry will continue to grow at 12 per cent.

Addressing the media, Mr Srinivasan said the company has been spending about 3 per cent of its sales on R&D and the results show in the new vehicles, which sport lot of new technology features developed in-house.

Alongside the petrol, CNG and LPG versions of the new three-wheeler, the company rolled out a new 125cc bike Flame, a 110cc variant of StaR City, an electric variant of Scooty Teenz and Apache RTR 160 FI in the performance bikes category with electronic fuel injection.

3-wheeler market

The existing three-wheeler market in the country is estimated at 5.4 lakh units a year, of which 3.6 lakh units come from the passenger segment.

The three-wheelers that were rolled out today sport two-stroke engines that comply with the emission and noise norms.

Mr Srinivasan said that the company is working on a four-stroke engine platform which will also be launched within the next one year. The four southern States and Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi together constitute about 90 per cent of the overall market for passenger three-wheelers in the country.

The company hopes to manufacture about 1 lakh units once production reaches full capacity.

The new 125cc bike Flame and the new Apache EFI 160 will be the technology showcases for TVS this year, he said. The Flame is said to sport the country’s first three-valve CC VTi (controlled combustion variable timing intelligent) engine. The engine has been developed in collaboration of AVL of Austria and TVS expects to manufacture about 35,000 units a year.

The Apache RTR 160 has been upgraded with electronic fuel injection in the new variant. The EFI technology has enabled TVS to boost peak power of this recently launched bike. While pricing has not been announced, this variant is expected to be about Rs 5,000 more compared with the non-EFI model.

The Scooty Teenz electric vehicle has been built on the same platform as the earlier two-stroke version of the scooterette. The EV will sport imported electric motor and is expected to reach a top speed of 40 kph and would be capable of a maximum range of 50 km per charge. The scooterette will come in three motor power variants.

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