Daimler India Commercial Vehicle Pvt Ltd, the 100 percent Indian subsidiary of German automobile giant Daimler AG, said that it is setting up a plant in Oragadam, TamilNadu (near Chennai) to roll out 36,000 trucks by 2012.
Marc Llistosella, the company's chief executive said that the company would be making 25-49-tonne trucks followed by 9-12 tonnes trucks at the plant. "We have developed prototypes of the trucks for the Indian market which will be tested on the test tracks built here," he added.
The plant is being built on a 400-acre plot and will be modular in nature so as to increase the production capacity in future to 75,000 units in the second phase. The total investment over a period of five years will be Rs 4,400 crore.
With 86 percent local content the trucks will be priced competitively in the Indian market. "We will outsource the engines for the light and medium duty trucks from an Indian manufacturer while the engines for the heavy duty vehicles will be made at our plant here. We have the entire range of transmission lines," he said. The import content in the trucks will be 12-14 percent.
Officials also informed that Daimler is open for joint venture partners in India provided 'the new joint venture partner makes business sense.'
Two-wheeler major Hero group had initially joined hands with Daimler for the truck plant but later withdrew when the global meltdown happened.
