By IANS
Washington : Automaker Daimler AG is close to announcing a joint venture with an Indian firm to manufacture trucks for the Indian market.
“In India we are very close to an announcement,” Andreas Renschler, a member of the Daimler board, said at an event in Detroit to launch a new heavy-duty diesel engine. “We have found a partner,” he said.
Daimler is planning to expand its commercial vehicle division in India and Russia, media reports said.
Daimler, which already sells a small number of its Actros heavy lorries in India, also plans to produce completely knocked down (CKD) versions of the vehicle in limited numbers later this year.
That would complement the much larger production of the vehicle planned with Mercedes’ Indian partner, which was not identified. Daimler holds small stakes in two Indian lorry makers, Tata and Eicher.
“We are discussing building a factory for truck assembly. We will make a final decision by the end of this year,” Renschler said.
“We have a very good position in our traditional markets. The real growth, if you look to the world market, will happen – or is already happening – in China, India and probably also Russia,” he said.
Daimler’s five lorry brands, Mercedes, Mitsubishi Fuso, Freightliner, Western Star and Sterling sold 537,000 units last year for almost 32 billion euros (about $46 billion). The group would again reach last year’s record level of operating profit of 2.02 billion euros in 2007, he said.
Daimler has invested a total of $1.5 billion since 2002 in the development of a global engine platform for all heavy-duty trucks in the mid to long-term. The goal is for trucks using the platform to have 90 percent shared parts and to produce a target volume of 200,000 trucks annually in the mid to long-term.
The automaker says it would save 600 million euros from the global engine platform once the system is fully implemented.