Honda To Launch New Ungeared Scooter In July

Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary of Japanese two-wheeler giant Honda Motor Company, will launch its new ungeared scooter in July 2002.

The company also plans to launch its first geared product in India in July 2003. The prototype of these two scooters have been imported into the country as completely built units (CBUs).

The government has allowed Honda to import the vehicles in CBU form, but the company is going in for local manufacturing.

The July 2002 model is likely to be 100 per cent indigenous vehicle. The only existing offering from the company till date, the Honda Activa, has a local content of 98 per cent.

Sources said work to add a new production line will begin shortly, and the production schedule is being revised to increase capacity utilisation.

From under 200 units per day, Honda plans to gradually increase production to 400 units per day in April this year. Thereafter, the production is likely to touch 500-600 units when the new model is on the line. Activa will, however, remain the core product throughout the year.

The new model (codenamed KRPA) will have the same 102 cc, automatic four-stroke engine as the Activa. However, it is getting a major facelift in terms of design. More fibre body parts are being added to the steel sheet body (as in the Activa) to give it an attractive exterior.

The product is likely to cost more than the Activa (Rs 35,628 on road in New Delhi) owing to the new design and features. But efforts are on for a more economical vendor development.

"Apart from bringing down prices, the strategy will be to make our scooters a fashion and style statement. The competition is now with mobikes," the executive added.

During the past year, the growth in two-wheeler sales has primarily come from the motorcycle segment, with scooters having lost its past glory.

Analysts attribute the trend to the "family-vehicle" tag attached to scooters. So much so, traditional scooter makers such as Bajaj Auto, Kinetic Engineering and LML have now shifted focus to the motorcycle segment. Honda also has a technical and financial stake in the country's largest mobike maker Hero Honda.

But the success of Honda depends on what effort the company applies to change the image of its product.

Honda's seriousness in the scooters market can be gauged from the fact that it will also launch a geared scooter in July next year taking competition at the backyard of Bajaj Auto, the executive said. The geared scooter will be a four-stroke model and will be positioned against existing four-stroke scooters of the Pune-based world's largest scooter maker.

"Once we are there, we will launch one or two new products every year," he added. Honda, in its effort to develop India as a global manufacturing hub, is also shifting gears towards exports. The company will ship its first export consignment of the locally built Activa to Mexico on January 16, when its plant at Manesar, Gurgaon, will be inaugurated by the chief minister of Haryana.