VE to make India hub for CVs

VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV), the joint venture between Sweden's Volvo and domestic firm Eicher Motors, today said it has planned to make India its global hub for commercial vehicles (CV) to cater to the emerging markets.

"We are looking at making India the centre for product development and manufacturing commercial vehicles to cater to the requirements of emerging markets," VE Commercial Vehicles Managing Director and CEO Siddhartha Lal told PTI.

The idea is to develop and manufacture commercial vehicles which has the robustness, at price-points that Eicher has been doing, he added.

"There will be a lot of aggregates such as engines and cabins from Volvo, while Eicher can provide axles and gearboxes," Lal said.

He said such products developed by VECV would cater to markets like Africa and South-East Asia besides, catering to the domestic demand.

Such vehicles would fill the lower and mid-rung of the markets, where Volvo does not have products at such prices, he added.

Lal added that the JV would look at leveraging on the worldwide sales network of Volvo to export Eicher branded commercial vehicles.

"Already Volvo has four brands of commercial vehicles - Volvo, Mack Trucks, Renault and Nissan Diesel. Eicher is the fifth and products form this brand will go to markets where it can be complementary," he added.

Asked if there were plans to bring the Nissan diesel range of truck to India, he said: "Not envisaged in the near future but in the long term it cannot be said 'yes' or 'no'."