Auto Monitor - 16-30 June 2011

I N D I A ’ S N O . 1 M A G A Z I N E F O R A U T O M O T I V E N E W S , V I E W S & A N A LY S I S

Auto Monitor www.au tomoni tor.co.i n

16-30 June 2011

INTERVIEW CHENNAI PLANT USES THE BEST TYRE TECHNOLOGY Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman, Apollo Tyres

Pg 10

FOUR-WHEELER SPECIAL Pg 18-43

` 50

AUTONOMICS

80 70 15.4 mn

60

Rs. 3,500

50 40 30

7.2 mn.

Rs. 700

20 10 0 0.0

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

R&D and royalty spend per unit: Rs thousands Global players

Indian players

INDIAN TWO-WHEELER PLAYERS TO FACE HEAT AS PALS TURN RIVALS Pg 14

Henkel to enhance presence in India

NEWS IN BRIEF Freelander 2 roars into city

Abhishek Parekh Mumbai

H

Amidst enthralling rock music, a machine with muscles—the Land Rover Freelander 2 commanded the stage and mesmerised the spectators in New Delhi recently. The iconic brand, is noteworthy since it’s more powerful, and Tata Motors has begun to roll out the cars from its plant already.

Gurmeet Singh Anand, MD AMP Motors, the official Jaguar Land Rover Dealership in the capital city and Rohit Suri, Head-Premier car Division, Tata Motors introduced the beasts of all terrains. Singh stated, ‘I’m confident the SUV will appeal to all car enthusiasts who want topnotch design, performance and reliability, both on and off road.’

The new vehicle is available in two variants—the TD4 SE is priced at `34,40,201 (ex-showroom Delhi) and the SD4 HSE is priced at `39,06,203 (ex-showroom Delhi).

enkel is planning to augment its presence in India through enhanced investments in manufacturing and application engineering capabilities with the aim of closely partnering with OEMs and suppliers. Though company officials refused to specify the level of investments, they affi rmed that the company would make sufficient investments to ensure above market growth rate in the adhesives business driven by the growing requirements from the automotive sector.

The company is planning to add advanced simulation and testing capabilities at its engineering and research centres in Delhi and Pune to ensure that work carried out at its overseas research centre can be carried out in India to meet growing demand from customers for speedy implementation. ‘Currently the fastest

Tata Motors bags 1,111 unit orders

I

n one of the largest single orders for Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicles (M&HCV) till date, Tata Motors bagged a mandate to supply 1,111 units of M&HCV, including the new generation Prima trucks from Siddhivinayak Logistics

DATA MONITOR Domestic Sales Sector

Apr-10

Apr-11

Change

PV

182,103

207,604

14.00%

CV

49,162

53,202

8.22%

3W

33,144

33,788

1.94%

2W

825,632

1,043,970

26.44%

TOTAL

1,090,041

1,338,564

22.80%

Sector

Apr-10

Apr-11

Change

PV

37,924

42,727

12.66%

CV

3,857

5,246

36.01%

3W

27,304

37,394

36.95%

2W

132,458

175,867

32.77%

TOTAL

201,543

261,234

29.62%

Exports

* Source: SIAM/ ** all sub segments considered

78 Pages

Realisations: Rs thousands

Vol. 11 No. 11

Tata Prima LPS 4928

(SVLL). Based in Surat, SVLL is one of the largest fleet owners in the country, owning a fleet of over 2,000 CVs. It operates across diverse segments like steel, cement, tractors, chemicals, machinery and is a pioneer in new segments like commercial vehicle chassis carriers.

SVLL plans to start transporting farm fresh fruits and vegetables through refrigerated containers on the Tata Prima. Tata Motors M&HCV sales in May 2011 saw a growth of 12 percent over May 2010. The company currently has 70 percent market share in M&HCV trucks.

growing market segment for us is the Tier I suppliers to the OEM, rather than OEM themselves and we are looking to offer advanced solutions to this customer segment,’ said Head, Automotive & Metals Group, Asia Pacific, China, Henkel, George Kazantzis in an exclusive chat with Auto Monitor during a recent visit to India. The company is looking to leverage on its relationship with OEMs overseas and meet the requirements of OEMs and global Tier I design centres in India. Currently the company has an equal revenue share of OEMs and Tier I companies and over the next three to four years, the higher revenue shares in the range of 60 percent would come from Tier I customers and the remaining from OEMs in India.

According to Kazantzis, OEMs are constantly juggling between various combinations of materials and bonding solutions which could reduce the overall system weight without compris-

George Kazantzis, Head, Automotive & Metals Group, Asia Pacific, China, Henkel

ing aesthetic appeal, safety and performance of the vehicle or system. If suppliers are not involved at a very early stage of design and engineering, many decisions subsequently made would lead to more weight and compromises in performance.

India is a major market which is playing a key role in driving inno-

Passenger vehicle sales show tepid growth this fiscal Our Bureau Mumbai

P

assenger vehicle sales markedly slowed down as OEMs are beginning to face the brunt of rising interest rates and fuel prices coupled with lack of buyer interest. Even though higher interest rates in the last fi scal did not derail the auto sales growth, high fuel prices this fi scal combined with higher interest rates have acted as a double whammy for the manufacturers. Industry players are of the opinion that passenger vehicle sales growth is likely to be in the low double digit rates in a more optimistic scenario.

Passenger vehicles segment grew at 11.01 percent during April-May 2011 over same period last year. Passenger cars grew by 10.04 percent, utility vehicles grew by 5.61 percent and vans grew by 29.57 percent in this period. Passenger vehicles exports grew at one of the slowest rates in recent times by around eight percent. In May 2011, passenger cars, utility vehicles and vans registered low growth at seven

percent, 4.98 percent and 23.31 percent respectively.

Two wheelers segment registered a growth of 18.08 percent this fiscal. Exports of two-wheelers grew at a faster pace of around 32 percent this fiscal, led by scooters growing by around 48 percent.

Mopeds, motorcycles and scooters grew by 21.12 percent, 18.63 percent and 14.54 percent respectively in the current fiscal.

The overall commercial vehicles segment registered growth of 12.16 percent during AprilMay 2011 as compared to the same period last year. In the CV segment, the Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicles (M&HCVs) registered growth of 4.58 percent and Light Commercial Vehicles (LCVs) grew at 18.73 percent.

Sales in the month of May 2011 over May 2010 registered a growth of around 16 percent. Threewheeler sales recorded a growth rate of 5.27 percent in April-May 2011. While three-wheeler passenger carriers grew by only 2.37 percent during April-May 2011 and goods carriers registered a growth of 15.68 percent.

vation for Henkel. It has worked on providing solutions in the areas of acoustic management, noise management, protection against dust by working in the area of chemical treatment.

Henkel is working on several solutions for material-to-material bonding that could lead to reduced overall vehicle weight and improved fuel efficiency aiding OEMs effort to reduce overall cost.

The company has around 46 percent marketshare in the adhesive solutions for automotive sector and offers a wide range of products and solutions for variety of material bonding requirements. ‘The major macro trend emerging in recent years is the production material used in manufacturing automobiles and innovations worked by OEMs in order to meet customer and price expectations. This is largely driving the choice between opting for fasteners and adhesives in any vehicle as well as material to material bonding requirements,’ Kazantzis added.

Mercedes-Benz India launches mobile optimised website

M

ercedes-Benz India has launched a mobileopt imised website : m.mercedes-benz.co.in—that can be readily accessed through multiple mobile devices including smart phones, androids and other feature phones capable of internet browsing.

Customised for mobile viewing, the website presents a summary of the brand’s corporate website, which is designed to function like a virtual car showroom with information on product highlights, technical data, picture galleries, pricing and details on local service centers. The mobile website is served in multiple layout modes device to ensure maximum quality output: irrespective of using HTML, xHTML or WML. Aimed at offering improved usability and better graphics and functionality, users soon will also have the option of redirecting themselves to the mobile website from the main website as well.

CONTENTS CORPORATE HMSI scouting for vendors for new plant

08

Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India is actively scouting for component vendors from south India to supply components to it proposed new facility in Karnataka

08 GLOBAL WATCH Mazda to stop making cars in United States

63

Mazda will pull out of its equal manufacturing venture with Ford and may stop manufacturing Mazda6 in Michigan

Audi Q3 production starts in Spain, market launch in Q4

64

Production for the new Audi Q3 has begun at SEAT’s factory in Martorell, Spain and around 100,000 units are slated to roll out

Mercedes-Benz in Russia: new sales record planned for 2011

73

Mercedes-Benz has grown stronger in Russia than in any other market in the last fiscalin a new all-time high and represents an increase of 63.7 percent

Advanced driving simulator opened in Sweden

75

Advanced driving simulator was inaugurated in Gothenburg to be used by Volvo Group for trucks, buses and construction equipment

ARB Bearing setting up new plant in Kundli

16

ARB Bearing is planning to invest `10 crore in technology upgradation in the next two years and spending another `10 crore towards setting up a new plant in Kundli

Maruti to focus on emerging segment

76

THE OTHER SIDE 18

Better packaged offers for customers, focus on the new growing segments and new diesel models are going to be the latest recipe for Maruti Suzuki to sustain its top position

Nissan Motor India to export non-Micra components

19

Nissan Motor India will soon be commencing exports of non-Micra components worth around $100 million this year

Daimler working on second generation biofuel

20

Daimler is backing second-generation bio-fuels (BTL, biomass-to-liquid fuels) such as SunDiesel in environment friendly initiatives

HSCI explores localisation, exports

26

Honda Siel Cars India seems to be gaining a key role in its Asia operations and working towards increasing localisation of its products

Hyundai explores new possibilities with Fluidic Verna

28

Hyundai Motor India has received bookings for about 12,000 Verna Fluidic even as it breaks new grounds in design

Sandeep Khosla

Associate Vice President: Sudhanva Jategaonkar

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Schaaf completed his doctoral thesis at the University of Bayreuth and joined BMW in 19996 and has gained extensive experience in Europe and Asia

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Auto Monitor

Marketing & Sales CEO-Publishing:

Dr Andreas Schaaf, President, BMW India

8

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

CORPORATE

HMSI scouting for vendors for new plant it proposed plant. ‘With the Karnataka plant coming up we will need to expand our vendor base. Almost 50 percent of o sustain its position in our vendors are located in the the Indian market after its northern region of the counsplit with the Hero Group, try. But due to geographical Honda Motorcycle & Scooter benefits we need to spread our India is planning to increase base to the southern region its total production capacity also,’ Vice-President, Sales, to 40 lakh units by mid-2013.

Marketing and Corporate The two-wheeler manufacturAffairs, HMSI, NK Rattan, told er, a wholly owned subsidiary Auto Monitor. of Honda Motor, is planning to Since the new plant is slated start its third plant in Karnataka to start by the fi rst half of 2013, by the fi rst half of 2013. most of the activity related to The company is right now it, like vendor hunt will start by scouting for vendors from south the middle of this year. The plant India to supply components to will have a production capacity of 1.2 million units at the start of the operation and can be ramped up to four million units. The plant will be located in Narsapuram The company plans to introduce a bike & scooter by 2012 area in

Shambhavi Anand Tapukara

T

Two wheelers being manufactured at the Tapukara plant of HMSI

Karnataka and will be spread in an area of 350, 000 square metre.

The Japanese giant intends to manufacture three of its popular products, Activa, CB Twister, and CB shine from the new facility.

‘Once all the three plants are in operation, we will be able to meet the requirements of urban as well as rural market in the country, which holds immense growth potential in this segment, President and CEO, HMSI, Keita Muramatsu said. He also added that they are not looking at matching the capacity of its erstwhile joint venture partner.

Tapukara Plant Is Operational HMSI inaugurated its second two-wheeler plant in Tapukara Industrial area of R ajasthan recently. The plant was inaugurated by Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot in the presence of Honda Motor President and CEO, Takanobu Ito and President and CEO, Honda Siel Cars India and Honda Motor India, Takashi Nagai.

The plant built at a cost of `460 crore has an initial capacity of 0.6 million units annually and will be raised to the full capacity

of 1.2 million units after an additional investment of `440 crore

by March 2012.

The Tapukara plant, which will manufacture Activa, CB Twister and CB Shine, is located about 65 km southwest of its Manesar plant and will employ 3,200 people by the end of phase two in March 2012. It is spread over an area of 240,000 metre square.

The company plans to introduce one motorcycle and one scooter to the Indian market by the end of FY12. These could also be refreshed models.

Delphi India appoints Nambi Ganesh as TCI director

Reva celebrated World Environment Day

D

elebrat i ng Wo r l d Environment Day on June 5, Mahindra Reva in association with Fever 104FM got together to spread awareness about the importance of ‘Going Green’ on June 4. Mahindra Reva had dedicated four Reva cars for this cause. The cars toured around the city of Bangalore and stopped at various hotspots like Lalbagh, Jayanagar BDA Complex and Shopper’s Stop— Bannerghatta Road. One car amongst the four was declared as the ‘Pledge Car’.

elphi Automotive, a leading global supplier of electronics and technologies for automotive, commercial vehicle and other market segments today announced the appointment of Nambi Ganesh as Director, Technical Centre India (TCI), Delphi India.

Announcing the appointment, President and Managing Director, Delphi India Reji Varghese said, ‘We are excited to see Nambi in his new role as the Director of TCI. The auto components industry in India is ripe for a new phase of growth and we believe Nambi will play a significant role in making Delphi a leader in this space. We are confident of his ability to accelerate growth and take Delphi’s business in India to greater heights owning to his previous experience and association with Delphi.’

In this role, Nambi will be reporting to Dominic Tan, Asia Pacific Product Engineering Director, Electronics and Safety (E&S). He would continue to leverage his association with Indian customers to grow Delphi E&S business in India.

Reji added, ‘Delphi has aggressive plans for this fi nancial year with increased focus on R&D. We are sure with Nambi’s skill sets and expertise we will further enhance Delphi’s development and help us in carrying out our plans more effectively.’

Nambi began his career with Delphi E&S India in 2001 as a Software Engineering Group Manager for Powertrain Producer Business Unit (PBU) and was instrumental in setting up the Integration, Test, and Validation activities at TCI for Powertrain Gas and Warning Systems PBUs.

Nambi Ganesh, Director, TCI

He gained valuable experience in E&S’ global headquarters in Kokomo, Indiana when he was on an 18-month assignment as Senior Software Group Manager, for the Active Safety Product Line. Upon his return to India, he was promoted to Staff Engineering Manager and was responsible for all global software execution from TCI for

major Product lines such as PT, Active Safety and Infotainment PBUs. He was promoted to Chief Engineer, IDI (Infotainment Driver Interface) PBU in December 2009, and was responsible for IDI PBU products for the Indian OEs from concept to launch. Subsequently, he was also appointed as the Chief Engineer for all Electronic Control (EC) PBU programs in India including BCM and Immobilizer products for Indian customers in December 2010.

Nambi holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Anna University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Madurai University. He has more than fourteen years of experience in the hardware design and software development industries in India prior to joining Delphi.

C

Keerthivasan S, Head, Business, Fever 104FM & R Chandramouli, Chief of Operations, Mahindra Reva

Chief of Operations, Mahindra Reva, R Chandramouli said, ‘We are happy to partner with Fever 104FM on World Environment Day to spread the message of ‘Going Green’. We believe that every individual in India should understand the importance of a clean, and green pollutionfree environment and through this initiative with Fever 104FM, we are trying to create awareness amongst the people of Bangalore.’

‘We at Fever 104FM understand the consequences of the current climate change situation and with this we reaffi rm our commitment and responsibility towards being an environmentfriendly organisation. We are very happy to partner with Mahindra Reva to promote a green environment. The pledge activity is a very responsible yet innovative way to reassert essential and simple steps to save Earth on the occasion of World Environment Day,’ said Head, Business, Fever 104FM, Keerthivasan S.

10

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

INTERVIEW

‘Chennai plant uses the best tyre technology’ While transporters seem to be agitated at the increase in the prices of tyres, Apollo Tyres is trying to walk an extra mile to please them. The company recently inaugurated a tyre service outlet exclusively for commercial vehicles at Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, New Delhi, that is equipped with modern servicing facilities especially for radial tyres and would also have training programs for drivers. Chairman, Apollo Tyres, Onkar S Kanwar talks to Auto Monitor about the reasons of increasing their product prices.

Shambhavi Anand New Delhi

Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman, Apollo Tyres

The transporters seem to be perturbed by the rising prices.

What do you have to say?

We too are concerned about transporters and drivers. It is for them that we have set up this CV zone with all the modern retail facilities. Rather than sitting in dhabas under the hot sun, they can sit in the air conditioned rooms while their tyres are being serviced. We want the drivers to enjoy the comforts that the owners of the passenger vehicles enjoy. There is a training centre in this service

station where they will be taught how to take the best care of their vehicle, about driving etiquettes, using which they can increase the life of their tyres and increase the mileage of their vehicles.

As far as increasing the prices of our products are concerned, we cannot help it. The prices of natural rubber and other raw materials are increasing sharply. Rubber costs 70 percent more and other raw materials like steel, chemicals are costlier by 40 percent. The cost of production has gone tremendously high. We have tried to absorb as much cost as we can but after a point we have to pass it on to our customers.

Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman, Apollo Tyres inaugurating the Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, New Delhi.

What are the major challenges faced by tyre manufacturers?

What are you doing to combat these problems?

The availability of natural rubber is a major challenge that every tyre manufacturer is facing.

Natural rubber is not a product that can be procured from anywhere. It takes four to seven years in the cultivation process. There are only three major producers of rubber—Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Some parts of Africa also grow rubber. In order Onkar S Kanwar, Chairman, Apollo Tyres shaking hands with Shankar Gupta, Proprietor of Country’s 1st Apollo CV Zone that was inaugurated at Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, New Delhi. (Left) Satish Sharma, Chief, India Operations, Apollo Tyres

to deal with the situation, we at Apollo Tyres are planning to take some rubber plantations under our control to ensure steady supply of the raw material. We will work in collaboration with certain companies which specialise in growing rubber.

Apollo CV Zone Workshop Area

ELITE MOLD

Have you already acquired any plantations?

We have identifi ed certain plantations for this purpose.

They are in South East Asia.

Rubber grown over here will help in feeding our industries.

We will use the best technology

to utilise this rubber and produce the best products.

You recently commissioned a plant in Chennai. Tell us about that.

The plant in Chennai is the latest next generation plant. It uses the best technology available in the world to produce tyres.

It is our ninth unit globally and fourth in India and was built in a record time of 14 months. After the completion of the fi rst phase, the plant had the capacity to produce around 16,000 passenger car tyres and 6,000 truck or bus

radial tyres a day. It is our largest plant globally.

We are making all our tyres in line with the European standards. And everyone knows that European standards are one of the most stringent and the best ones. None of the Indian manufacturers follow such high standards. Our tyres contain high amounts of silica. The key advantage of which is the ability to reduce fuel consumption whilst maintaining performance critical qualities such as wet grip.

Tyres incorporating silica have been on the market for well over

We are making all our tyres in line with the European standards. And everyone knows that European standards are one of the most stringent and the best ones

a decade now although silica has only become widely incorporated into tyre design strategies within the last few years or so. It makes the tyres eco-friendly.

Add: No.17 Yongjiang(s)Road Beilun Zone.Ningbo.China P.C.: 315806 Sales Tel: Tracy Lin +86-13706848069 +86-574-86148158 After-sales Tel: Steven Lin +86-13566032563 +86-574-86117178-804 Fax: +86-574-86117138 Email: tracy@cmmould.com.cn www.elitemould.cc

What are your expansion plans for the next five years? Any acquisition on cards?

Our main target is to expand our current capacities. We have just set up a big plant and want to keep growing. As far as acquisitions are concerned, we are always on the look out for something good.

EDITORIAL Encourage industry to be globally competitive

T

he end of this month will put an end to the Duty Entitlement Passbook Scheme (DEPB), which the government thinks could save about `8,000 crore every year. While the government may end up saving, it will certainly wipe out the prospects of exporters especially in the auto industry—both vehicles and component manufacturers.

Although the auto industry accounts for about `3,27,000 crore including exports of about `27,000 crore, representing about six percent of the GDP, it has not been given any sector specific schemes to encourage exports, other than the DEPB. This scheme enables the exporters to obtain refund of duties and taxes suffered by the products that are being exported during the manufacturing cycle covering the entire value chain from Tire III to Tier II up to Tier I suppliers.

The auto industry already faces several disadvantages due to higher cost of fi nance, infrastructure facilities including power, real estate costs and expensive raw materials. For instance, the cost of power in China is about 15 to 20 percent of the average tariff in India. In addition, the major raw materials are also available at much more competitive costs.

Coming to India, in addition to the array of disadvantages, the taxes and duties by both the central and the state governments ensnares the auto industry further. In spite of all odds, the Indian auto industry, especially the two-wheelers and the commercial vehicle segments, have cultivated several exports markets over a period of time. And these efforts would go in vain if the DEPB is discontinued.

The objective of the scheme is to encourage exports of products that have a higher level of local value addition.

However, if discontinued, it will boost the imports of more components. In addition, it will also support exporting

products with lesser value addition, depriving the local industry with its business as well as employment opportunities in the country as a whole.

The Finance Ministry is keen for the discontinuance of the scheme as it looks at it as a drain to the exchequer, but actually it is not. The loss of about `8,000 crore is arrived at by considering an average level of six percent benefit being offered to the exporters under this scheme for the total export value of about `1,33,000 crore. However, it is more than 12 percent of the total exports, and about 20 percent of the manufactured exports of the country, which will be at stake if the scheme is withdrawn. For a saving of `8,000 crore, the government will lose different revenue streams out of the total exports. Therefore before putting an end to DEPB, the government should consider a suitable scheme, which will help the exporters reimburse the embedded taxes due to the cascading impact of taxation.

Also the new scheme should be exporter-friendly to make the domestic players much more competitive in the international arena.

This issue is a special on four-wheelers. Though the automotive industry growth has begun to soften—especially in the passenger vehicle segment—the players are going ahead with the scheduled plans of capacity expansion and fielding new models. We have attempted to cover most of the OEMs in this special issue. Wishing you much reading pleasure. Do send us your feedback.

T. Murrali t.murrali@infomedia18.in

IMAGE of the fortnight

FORTNIGHT’S QUOTES ‘We’re not electrifying a certain vehicle and making a science project for a few people. We’re electrifying our core (models)’ Jim Farley, Vice President, Marketing, Ford

‘We were losing sales because we couldn’t provide the marketing’

‘Assembling vehicles in India has duty benefits which will be passed on to our customers’

Daniel Akerson, Chief Executive Office, GM on financing GM dealers through GM Financial and Ally Financial

Carl-Peter Forster, Group Chief Executive and Managing Director, Tata Motors

‘By 2013 at the latest, we will start series production of nearly 20 projects for 12 automakers, involving products for electromobility’

‘We have chalked bigger plans for the performance aficionados of the country’

Bernd Bohr, Chairman, Robert Bosch

Yoshiro Segawa, Managing Director (designate), India Kawasaki Motors

Auto Monitor Editorial Team Editor T. Murrali Principal Correspondent Abhishek Parekh Senior Correspondent Nabeel A Khan Correspondents Shambhavi Anand, Bhargav TS, Akmal Rahman B Senior Copy Editor Nandita Rohit Kapadia Contributing Editors Sirish Chandran Bertrand D’Souza

Design & Photography Chief Photographer Mexy Xavier Photographer Neha Mithbawkar, Joshua Navalkar Asst. Art Director Varuna Naik Senior Designer Mahesh Talkar Scanning & Colour Correction Ravikumar Potdar, Ravi Salian, Sanjay Shelar Production Team Dnyaneshwar Goythale, Vikas Bobhate, Pravin Koyande

Send in your feedback and comments to: The Editor AUTO MONITOR, Infomedia 18 Ltd, 6th Floor, Kannammai Bldg, 611, Anna Salai, Chennai - 600 006. Ph: +91 44 3986 4200. Email: automonitor@infomedia18.in

Rajiv Bajaj, MD, Bajaj Auto; Yoshiro Segawa, MD (designate), India Kawasaki Motors

Ninja 650R to be sold at `4.57 lakh Kawasaki Bajaj launched the Kawasaki Ninja 650R for the Indian market at the competitive price of `4.57 lakhs, ex-showroom, Delhi. The company also intends to export the bike. It will be sold and serviced exclusively through Bajaj Probiking showrooms.

The bike has a 649 cc liquid-cooled twin-cylinder engine. It also has a host of features such as triple petal disc brakes, MotoGP display, daylight running lights with hazard indicators, under-slung exhaust and a twin-cylinder engine tuned for 91 octane fuel to make it best suited for India and its diverse riding conditions.

‘The Kawasaki Ninja 250R has been a success with 1500 of these speed machines sold to date. It is now joined by its larger sibling to rule the roads,’ Managing Director, Bajaj Auto, Rajiv Bajaj said.

14

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

AUTONOMICS

Indian two-wheeler players to face heat as pals turn rivals As global technological tie-ups end, rising R&D spends to drag down player profits in the next three-five years

Comparison of R&D and royalty cost per unit of global and Indian players

Realisations: Rs ` thousands

80 70 15.4 mn

60

Rs. ` 3,500

50 40 30

7.2 mn.

Rs.` 700

20

328

323 288

2006-07

2007-08

2008-09

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

R&D and royalty spend per unit: Rs ` thousands Global players

Indian players

Source: Company annual reports, CRISIL Research

Market share of segment leaders Segment leader (2005-06) Motorcycles ---Economy ---Executive ---Premium Scooters

HHML HHML BAL HMSI

Source: CRISIL Research

Market share (total sales volumes) No of models 2005-06 2010-11 2005-06 2010-11 47.1 70.3 61.1 50.4

32.9 63.8 49.1 42.7

9 15 11 8

6 21 17 10

2011-12P

(per cent) 16.0 15.0

14.8

14.8

14.6

14.0

13.8

13.6

13.1

13.0

11.8

12.0

11.7

11.0 10.7 10.2

10.0

9.9

201112P

2010-11

2009-10

2008-09

2007-08

2006-07

9.0

Source: CRISIL Research

have remained at five-six percent of (as a percentage of total sales), given the need for constant innovation.

The huge gap in R&D spends has impacted profitability of Indian and global players significantly. Between 2005 and 2010, average margins for domestic two-wheeler players have been at 12 percent (14 percent including Bajaj Auto), while that of their global counterparts has been at nine percent levels. Even after excluding R&D costs that is a key differentiator, margins of international players would average slightly lower at about 15 percent as compared to 16 percent for Indian two-wheeler manufacturers.

Rising competition to hit Indian two-wheeler players hard 0.0

2010-11E

Operating margins to trend lower than decadal averages

10 0

2009-10

Source: CRISIL Research

2005-06

Average R&D costs for Indian players will increase from an average of one-1.2 percent of sales to about four percent over the next three-five years. The increase in R&D costs will be led by two factors—absence of significant technology tie-ups with global players and rising competition.

Earlier, all the three major players, Hero Honda, Bajaj and TVS, had such alliances. (Hero and Honda; TVS and

Traditionally, Indian two-wheeler players haven’t incurred significant R&D costs, owing to which their margins have been higher than that of their global counterparts. As a part of total sales, R&D costs have always accounted for less than two percent.

This has been so due to three factors: i) low-cost technology sourcing agreements; ii) lower emission standards: India still follows the BS-III standards, the equivalent of Euro-III, IV norms; and iii) the focus of R&D on improving mileage rather than aspects like drive quality or power that entail greater cost.

R&D costs for global players are higher, as they comply with stringent emission norms and focus on high-end models.

Although high-end models, especially niche models like sports bikes, are priced higher, international players’ R&D costs

365

348

2004-05

R&D costs of Indian two-wheeler players are set to increase

Indian two-wheeler players have always earned better margins than their global counterparts

458

2003-04

P

rofitability of Indian two-wheeler companies will continue to decline over the next three-fi ve years, as Research and Development (R&D) costs are expected to increase. The absence of technology tie-ups with global players will force Indian two-wheeler manufacturers to increase R&D spends. Consequently, R&D costs per unit will rise from one1.2 percent of sales to about four percent of sales. This is significant as the Hero Group—which has a 42 percent market share—will end its ties with Honda by 2014. With this, the last technology tie-up in the industry will end. Moreover, global two-wheeler players such as Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha, with a vast product portfolio, are directly foraying into India.

As a result, competition will get fiercer.

CRISIL Research therefore expects operating margins of Indian two-wheeler players to decline to eight-10 percent from a 10-year average of 12-14 percent.

(In Rs) (In `)

2002-03

Hetal Gandhi Team leader, CRISIL Research

Trend in per unit R&D costs of Indian two-wheeler players

2001-02

Sridhar C Head, Automobiles, CRISIL Research

Suzuki; Bajaj and Kawasaki). Under such agreements, the royalty costs they paid to global fi rms were lower (capped at 1.5two percent of per unit realisations). As a result, they didn’t have to invest on R&D inhouse as well.

However, TVS ended its alliance in 2001, while Bajaj and Kawasaki parted ways in early 2000. Since then, R&D costs for both players have increased. As of 2009-10, for TVS, R&D costs accounted for two percent of total sales, while for Bajaj the proportion was 1.6-1.8 percent.

Similarly, R&D costs for the Hero Group will also increase as it will end its reliance on Honda’s technology by 2014. Currently, Hero’s R&D costs account for 2.6-2.8 percent of total sales, most of which are royalty costs (paid to Honda).

Going ahead, Indian two-wheeler players will have to invest more on developing in-house R&D capabilities, to maintain their market shares amid rising competition. Consequently, their R&D costs will increase to about four percent of total sales, as they lose out on the royalty cost advantage. This in turn will pull down the profitability of Indian two-wheeler players.

Competition in the domestic twowheeler industr y will also intensif y further, led by the entry of new players, declining market shares of leading players across segments and the re-entry of some players. Global two-wheeler players such as Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha have started to establish a direct presence in the Indian two-wheeler market. As these players bring in a vast experience and a wide product portfolio, competition in the industry will intensify further.

Moreover, re-entry of certain players such as LML and Piaggio will also make competition in the industry fiercer. CRISIL Research therefore believes that Indian

two-wheeler players are likely to invest more on R&D to step up the rate of model introduction, to prevent market shares from eroding further.

Intensifying competition will also push up other costs such as distribution costs, dealer margins, discounts and advertising spends. During 2008-09 to 2010-11, these costs increased by eight percent annually, from being rangebound over the previous years. CRISIL Research therefore expects operating margins of Indian two-wheeler players to be impacted significantly.

Operating margins of Indian players to converge with that of global players Over the next three-five years, oper ating margins of Indian two-wheeler players will decline to converge with that of their global counterparts. This will be so because Indian players will have to develop in-house R&D capabilities. Therefore, as a result of the twin forces of rising R&D costs and fierce competition, operating margins of domestic two-wheeler players to trend lower at eight-10 percent over the next three-five years, lower than the 10-year average (of 12-14 percent).

(Please note that the views expressed here are those of CRISIL Research and not of CRISIL’s Ratings division.)

16

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

CORPORATE

ARB Bearing setting up new plant in Kundli Nabeel A Khan New Delhi

C

onscious about the role of technology in propelling growth, ARB Bearing is planning to invest `10 crore in technology upgradation in the next two years. The company will also be spending another `10 crore towards setting up a new plant in Kundli, Haryana, which is expected to

be operational by the end of this year.

The Delhi-based manufacturer, which gets its major revenue share from the aftermarket is now planning to increase its presence among OEMs also.

So far it has been catering toHMT Tractors, Preet Tractors, Standard Tractors and some institutional setup. It is now in talks with Ashok Leyland, Eicher and Mahindra & Mahindra to embellish its list of customers. The new plant being set up on a two acre land is going to play an important role in this strategy. The company currently has four manufacturing units.

ARB’s new plant in Kundli is expected to be operational by the end of the year

Entering PV Segment

Vinod Goel, Director, Marketing, ARB Bearing

‘We are talking to a number of OEMs to supply bearings and to fulfil their requirements we have started working on our basics, like improving the technology. We

are also planning to enter the passenger vehicle segment, which needs highly engineered products,’ Director, Marketing, Vinod Goel told Auto Monitor.

Towards this, the company is to incorporate suitable technology, which will help it adapt to passenger cars latter, he said.

It claims to have clocked a turnover of `120 crore in FY11 that consists of `40 crore from exports, `15 crore from the OEMs and the rest from the aftermarket. ARB has been exporting predominately to the Middle East, South America and European countries. It plans to enter all those market where products from China did not have dominance, although it imports some of the raw materials from the country.

The Bearing Edge ‘It’s very tough to penetrate a market which is dominated by Chinese products as the price differential is huge, so we try to enter those markets where the share of such products is less than 25 percent,’ Goel added. It envisages growing around 30 percent in the coming year. Goel emphasised that Chinese manufacturers don’t have strong presence in taper rolling bearing which gives it an edge over them.

The bearing maker claims to have presence in over 50 countries and produces 1,200 varieties of bearing for various applications including customised ones.

Samples of bearings produced by ARB

Having a large presence in the aftermarket, it sees counterfeiting as a major roadblock apart from increase in the price of the input material cost.

Tech Up ARB is planning to introduce a CNC line for the turning operation, apart from setting up a heat treatment plant. These initiatives will help improve the quality as well as reduce the manpower requirement. It is also working on augmenting automation at its plants.

The new plant in Kundli will have two CNC lines while it will also gradually upgrade the other plants with CNC lines, which will provide better quality products and profit margins.

The CNC lines will also help increase the aesthetic appeal of the products. It has also ordered a heat treatment plant which will be commissioned at the new facility. Though ARB doesn’t have any structured resea rch a nd development centre, it works out from its qua lit y control department for designing and testing of the components.

Recently, the company ventured into two new products including grease that is applied to bearings and universal joint crosses. Each product has contributed to the turnover by over `2 crore in a year’s time. It hopes to double it in the next two to three years.

18

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

Maruti to focus on emerging segment Nabeel A Khan New Delhi

B

etter packaged offers for customers, focus on the new growing segments and new diesel models are going to be the latest recipe for Maruti Suzuki to sustain its top position in the time of spiralling fuel prices and rising interest rates.

The carmaker is also working on introducing a new SUV, based on the positive feedback received on its concept vehicle—R3, showcased during Auto Expo 2010.

‘We are trying to attack the new emerging segment such as the MPV and SUVs. The R3, which we had displayed at the Auto Expo 2010, has received very good feedback, we are currently studying the response and thinking of entering the segment,’ Chief General Manager, Marketing, Maruti Suzuki Shashank Srivatsava told Auto Monitor.

Sales numbers of the company for the first two months of the fiscal year—April and May—showed fatigue creeping in as the demand slowed down despite offering discounts. Maruti appeared to be troubled as its backbone small car portfolio (cars like Alto, Wagon-R, Zen, Swift, Ritz, A-Star) saw the numbers go down by three percent to 61,048. This is the second straight month when its small car portfolio has seen negative growth.

However, gains in its sedan portfolio of SX4 and Dzire helped the company make up for this

loss and fi nish the month (May) up by four percent at 93,519 units against 90,041 units in the same period a year ago. When asked whether the company plans to give more focus to this segment, it denied any such shift.

Mantra In Mind It argued that if the sales go down for a month or two, it cannot introduce a high-end car and clearly distinguish the long term trends and the short term bleeps.

It would see the long term projections if it has to make any decision regarding what models to bring in, and what investments to make. The company also pointed out that it was still early in the year and just two months have not been so great, but it would be able to maintain the growth in tune with that of the industry. The leading carmaker emphasised on positive projections based on its large volumes. Maruti has identified interest rates, spiralling fuel prices and commodity prices as its main bumps on the road to growth.

The home grown company having its major revenue coming from the mass segment, which is most exposed to fluctuating interest rates and fuel prices, fi nds it very difficult to foresee whether it will be able to bounce back immediately after June. However, it was confident that it would attain the general projection in the industry that is around 12 to 15 percent.

‘We have a better packaged value for the customer, like pre-

Maruti R3 being showcased

sales fitting of accessories in the vehicle, offering good exchange bonuses or offering fi nancing options. I think, at this point of time, we should offer greater value to customers,’ Srivatsava added.

Looking Forward

According to the carmaker, the enquiry levels have been higher by at least 20 percent now compared to last year, which indicates that people are interested and waiting, but they perhaps don’t fi nd any particular reason to buy immediately. The company has set up a CAGR for the next five years at around 13 percent growth.

However, it will continue its strong marketing expenditure.

Last year, it invested `250 crore in marketing which includes BTL and ATL and looks at making similar investments this fiscal. To achieve the target, it holds that enhancing consumer satisfaction will be important as word of mouth promotions and referrals help Shashank Srivastava, Chief General Manager,Marketing, Maruti Suzuki in enhancing sales to a

great extent. If the current customers are satisfied then it has won half the battle.

Talking about the recently introduced Kizashi, a sports luxury sedan, it said that it has close to 1000 bookings since it was launched at the end of February.

In the last three months, it has already delivered close to 300 units. The vehicle is imported as CBU but the manufacturer is considering assembling it here, depending on the sustainable volume; the study is underway.

It could not provide the details of the numbers or volume that was required to go into CKD.

The Diesel Way The diesel engine is also going to play a major role in its business strategy ahead. Going back to 2002, the difference between the prices of diesel and petrol was close to `nine and now it’s over `23 in Delhi. Initially the perception was that maintaining a diesel vehicle was very high, but of late, the technology has improved which has in turn improved the situation. For Maruti, diesel vehicles consist of around 22 percent of the total sales. While 32 percent of the total cars sold in India is diesel. However with respect to

the SX4 and Dzire, diesel contributes 70 percent of the total sales of the two models.

The company is open to tapping opportunities in diesel and at the same time, being mindful of the imminent increase in diesel engine prices due to the upcoming new emission norm that will require special particulate for fi lter for diesel engine.

And road tax on the vehicle has also increased.

Increasing Capacity The carmaker is also working on ramping up its capacity. It is already scouting for a new plant in Gujarat. Currently, it has a capacity of around 8.5 lakh units in Gurgaon, and another plant in Manesar has a capacity of 3.5 lakh, totalling to a capacity of around 12 lakh.

‘We have two new plants coming up, each with an annual capacity of 2.5 lakh units, so we will have a total capacity of around 17 lakh a year by the end of 2013. Currently we are selling 12 lakh cars a year, so we can go up to 15 lakh cars by 2013 end. By 2015-16, we will increase our sales to over 20 lakh units to maintain our market as the total market size will be around 45 lakh units by then.

Maruti’s Manesar plant under siege Our Bureau New Delhi

A

s the logjam at the Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar plant continues, the carmaker, has toughened its stand against the striking workers and terminated the services of 11 of them when the report was written) for allegedly inciting the workers, with immediate effect.

Over 2,500-odd workers at the Manesar plant, went on a strike on 5 June, demanding the recognition of a new union— Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU). The union is independent of the present one, including workers of the Gurgaon plant.

Terming the protest as illegal, a company spokesperson told Auto Monitor ‘The management is negotiating with the workers, but so far none have arrived at any consensus’, he said. The Manesar plant rolls out over 1,2001,300 cars every day. The strike has already impacted production with a loss of under 2,000 cars in the last three days.

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER SPECIAL

Auto Monitor

19

Nissan Motor India to export non-Micra components The company plans to export sub-assemblies too; targets $100 million for this fiscal T Murrali Chennai

N

issa n Motor India (NMIPL), the wholly owned subsidiary of Nissan Motor Company of Japan will soon be commencing exports of non-Micra components. Besides, it will commence exports of components as sub-assemblies from independent parts that are being exported now. This will take the company’s component exports to around $100 million this year from $40 million it exported last fi scal. NMIPL is working with its suppliers towards this initiative.

Last year’s exports of $40 million were four times more than the set target of $10 million. The increase was due to the demand from its parent company’s plants across the globe. The Japanese company exported to several Nissan’s plants outside India including Thailand, China, Japan, UK and many more.

Speaking to Auto Monitor, the Managing Director and CEO of NMIPL, Kiminobu Tokuyama said that a few plants of Nissan have experience in exporting components as ‘package’ or subassemblies and the same strategy will be followed by NMIPL. These kinds of exports will commence from this year itself, he said. The company may not increase the number of vendors, but increase the quantum of sourcing from almost every supplier to meet the increasing demands. At present NMIPL has 97 vendors with 50 percent of them located in Chennai.

Initially it began with exporting parts that were meant for Micra hatchback. This year, it is planning to export components even for sedan, though NMIPL is yet to launch the model in the domestic market. ‘We have been requested to export nonMicra components because of cost competitiveness’, he said.

The target of $100 million for the export of components is basically due to high value of sedan components and increased volume, he indicated.

Since NMIPL went on sale in July 2010, the company has so far sold close to 15,000 Micras in India. Besides, it has also exported over 55,000 units mainly to Europe, Africa and Middle East.

Though it exported more than three times the sale in the domestic market, the priority for the company, according to Tokuyama is not exports. ‘India is our home country and it is our priority; we try to meet the demand from this country fi rst. The market size of Europe, Africa and Middle East is much larger; however, it does not mean that export is the prime focus. Indian market is vital and we have 33 dealers in place. The plan is to touch 100 dealerships by 2013. On the whole, we are satisfied with the progress. Basically all the activities are on track,’ he said. The company is on course to achieve the set target.

While the production of cars is as per schedule, the component exports have grown four-fold than the projections for last year. Seeking the reason for this growth pattern, he said, ‘Nissan’s production is increasing and globally we are expanding. And this calls for more demand for components,’ he said.

Kiminobu Tokuyama, MD & CEO, Nissan Motors India

The company is aggressively working on to launch the second model, which will be a sedan,

The company is aggressively working on to launch the second model, which will be a sedan, within this year.

The new car, though not Micra sedan, will be built on the Micra platform. Next year it will be launching a MPVcode name NV 200, through its joint venture with Ashok Leyland

within this year. The new car, though not Micra sedan, will be built on the Micra platform.

Next year it will be launching an MPV—code name NV 200, through its joint venture with Ashok Leyland, which will be pitted against the likes of Innova and Scorpio.

Since the sedan will be a new car, Tokuyama said the dealers need to understand the concept, target customer and the after sales service. Since the dealers have to provide quality service, the company is offering aggressive training to them. ‘We will target the core market in C segment,’ he said. When asked whether the car would avail the excise duty benefit based on the length of four metres, he replied, ‘No company will develop cars

more than four metres in length,’ indicating that the sedan will be competitively priced. Though he did not mention that the sedan will have both diesel and petrol at the time of launch, he stated that eventually it will have both fuel options. ‘Without diesel, how can anyone survive in the market,’ he quipped.

NMIPL’s existing range of products include the X-Trail (premium SUV), the Teana (luxury sedan) and 370Z (iconic sports car) imported from Japan as CBUs. Last fi scal was an action packed year for the company as it commenced production in March, started domestic sales in July and exports from October 2010. The company is confident to roll out its 100,000th car before the end of this month.

20

Auto Monitor

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

16 - 30 June 2011

Daimler working on second generation biofuel Shambhavi Anand Pune

Piyush Arora, Director, Technical, Mercedes-Benz India

W

ith the intent of being an environment friendly automaker, Daimler is backing second-generation biofuels (BTL, biomass-to-liquid fuels) such as SunDiesel. ‘We are committed to the use of clean, alternative fuels. Biofuels can make a significant contribution to environmentally compatible mobility, while at the same time reducing dependence on fossil fuels,’ Director, Technical, Mercedes-Benz India, Piyush Arora said.

This synthetic fuel can be produced from materials like straw, waste wood or entire energy crops, for example, and therefore does not compete with food and animal feed production.

‘It is extremely important to focus on alternate fuel because of the fuel policy and pricing.

In India, we had the successful extraction of the biodiesel from Jatropha plants. But there is the food crisis to be taken care of.

Jatropha is not commercially viable,’ he added. Mercedes Benz is also focussing on the judicious use of recycled or renewable raw materials during the product development process in its Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI) which is situated in Bangalore.

According to Arora, environmentally responsible product development is not just about

producing vehicles which contribute less to the emission. But the process begins with the selection of suitable raw materials and ends with recycling compatible designs and production processes, which make it possible to reuse or recycle used components at a later stage.

The company pays particular attention to use strategic raw materials such as rhodium, lithium and other rare elements. The Design for Environment (DFE) experts of Daimler analyse the functions of these raw materials and the quantities in which they are used for each production series in order to conserve these resources.

As a result of this effort, the company has been able to

increase the total volume of all parts and components in the passenger car production that have been approved for the use of renewable or recycled raw materials by 25 percent respectively by 2015, as compared to the volume for 2010.

Due to the increasing prices of ferrous metals, the auto-maker has switched to the usage of non-ferrous material in a lot of areas instead of ferrous. ‘In the long term, we would be looking at using more and more substitutes for ferrous metals. As far as immediate future is concerned, there are no extensive plans in this area,’ Arora informed.

Apart from other eco-friendly initiatives like projects on hybridization and electrifica-

tion, Mercedes has introduced various technologies to the Indian market in this regard. Last year, in 2010, it introduced the CGI technology in India through the C 200. The technology uses sophisticated petrol direct-injection engine with spray guided combustion process.

The engine’s injection procedure makes for much better fuel and thermodynamic efficiency than the wall-guided combustion process previously employed with direct injection. With this technology, the engine can run with high excess air and thus offer excellent fuel efficiency. The technology made its debut with the C Class in the Indian market.

Mercedes has also implemented BlueTech technology globally.

Developed by Mercedes-Benz, this technology makes the diesel engine as clean as the gasoline engine and even complies with strict US emissions standards.

The technology combines optimised combustion with special exhaust gas after treatment. This is known as Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR). With the aid of ammonia, it converts

Mercedes has implemented BlueTech technology globally.

The technology makes the diesel engine as clean as the gasoline engine and complies with strict US emissions standards

toxic nitrogen oxides into harmless nitrogen and water vapour. It is ideally suited to every type of vehicle, from the passenger car right up to the heavy truck.

Expansion Plans Owing to the increasing demand, Mercedes has recently started a second shift at their Chakan plant. The company is also planning to expand the manufacturing capacity of the plant. By the end of the next year, the in-house paint shop will also be ready.

In terms of products, the luxury carmaker intends to expand its base in Tier II and Tier III cities.

‘Such cities are heavily contributing to our growth. We also have a deeply rooted sales and dealership network that further helps our growth and we aim on further strengthening our foot hold to serve our customers better,’ Arora added.

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22

Auto Monitor

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

16 - 30 June 2011

Mahindra grows in ‘small commercial vehicle’ segment Our Bureau Mumbai

I

n a bid to garner larger share of the utility vehicle segment, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has been on the offensive of late with several new launches since the beginning of this year.

The major challenges identified by the company going forward are the commodity price rise leading to higher manufacturing costs, hike in interest rates with the potential to derail the consumer demand, capacity constraints with suppliers and uncertainty in fuel prices. ‘Though automobile sales remained robust last fi scal with interest rates not having much impact on the demand, we are expecting the growth in auto sales to be more muted this fiscal,’ President, Automotive & Farm equipment Sectors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Dr Pawan Goenka said in an earlier interaction with Auto Monitor.

M&M launched four products

Dr Pawan Goenka

in the automotive sector and three products were launched by Mahindra Navistar Automotive during the last fiscal. Automotive sector’s bid to a garner bigger share in the utility vehicle segment led to the launch of the Genio, the Gio variant, Maxximo minivan, the Thar and Gio cab.

The significant step forward for the company was to revive the stagnant sales of the Logan. The brand had been clocking an average sales of around 500 to 600 units per month until June last year rising to consistently clock volumes

SP Shukla appointed President, Special Group Projects at M&M

The sales of light commercial vehicles (3.5 to 7.5 GVW) were relatively flat at 10,234 units for last fiscal as compared to 9,829 units in the previous year. Exports of Automotive sector grew by around 62 percent to touch 17,138 units last fiscal as compared to 10,567 units in the previous fiscal.

The company appears to be pinning its hope for gaining a major international profi le on its Korean acquisition Ssangyong Motor Company. M&M acquired Ssangyong Motors by signing a fi nal agreement early this year.

M&M has already made management reshuffle in order to draw operational synergies with the Korean company and deeper cooperation in engineering is expected in coming months.

Ssangyong meanwhile has reentered the Chinese market by signing a distributorship contract with one of the largest automobile sales companies: Pang Da Automobile Trade and SCAS

Investment Group. It plans to collaborate with the two companies to expand the dealership network up to 150 by the year 2013.

Positioning the new Korando as the flagship model, SYMC will sell 30,000-50,000 vehicles annually by 2013. Ssangyong’s export to China will resume in August. Pang Da Automobile Trade and SCAS Investment Group will set up separate sales companies to cover 21 northern states and cities and 10 states and cities in the south respectively. Pang Da and SCAS are automobile sales companies in China. Founded in 1954, some of the major brands in Ssangyong’s product portfolio include compact 4WD SUV Korando, the Musso, luxury passenger car Chairman and monocoque compact SUV Korando C mainly targeted at the export markets in October 2010.

Ssangyong has a domestic network of over 130 dealers and exports to over 90 countries through over 1,200 dealers.

New Ludhiana dealership facility for BMW India

B

M

&M appointed SP Shukla as President-Special Group Projects and inducted him as a member of the Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M).

Shukla is an MBA from the IIM, Ahmedabad, where he received the Mahindra Industrial Scholarship for academic excellence in Marketing and Finance. He is also a B Tech from IIT BHU, Varanasi.

His earlier stints were with Dunlop India, Swisscom Essar (now Vodafone Essar) and most recently, the Reliance Group.

Shukla is acknowledged as a

of around 1,000 odd units per month from around September last year. ‘The Logan is on the recovery mode as a brand and with some more appropriate marketing and other suitable changes should ensure major recovery in sales. We have been evaluating various options for the brand,’ Senior Vice President, M&M, Arun Malhoutra told Auto Monitor in an interaction earlier this year.

According to a recent company presentation to analyst, M&M’s Automotive sector clocked revenues of around $3.1 billion on the back of sales volumes of 377,065 units clocking a growth of around 26 percent.

M&M’s utility vehicle sales grew by around 7.5 percent to touch 230,110 units in the last fiscal (2010-11) as compared to 214,128 units in the previous fiscal. The company’s three wheelers sales grew by 32 percent to touch 71,332 units in the last fiscal compared to 53,702 units in the previous year.

SP Shukla

pioneer in mobile telephony and has many industry firsts to his credit in the areas of strategy, technology and marketing.

MW India announced the opening of its new dealership facility of Krishna Automobiles in Ludhiana.

Krishna Automobiles brings to Ludhiana, BMW standards of sales and service and the same international experience as any BMW dealership worldwide.

The new showroom and workshop of Krishna Automobiles are located at Dhandari Kalan, GT Road and is headed by Managing Director, Krishna Automobiles, Sachit Passi. Spread over 38,000 sq ft, the new dealership has an ultra-modern showroom integrated with an after-sales service facility featuring service bays and a spare parts inventory. The

display area. The showroom can display up to seven cars and the workshop is equipped with 26 service bays that can service up to 100 cars per day.

BMW opens new dealerships in Goa BMW India recently opened new dealership in Goa. The Goa BMW 3 series in Goa dealership, Bavaria design of the showroom is based Motors will offer both sales and upon Reception At The Car (RATC) service facility. Spread in over and Urban Street Display concept 18,000 sq ft the showroom and which is a signature BMW layout workshop of Bavaria Motors are with a consultation lounge, sales located at Verna Industrial and after sales desk close to the Estate, Salcete, Goa.

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16 - 30 June 2011

Tata Motors global vehicle sales crosses one million Our Bureau Mumbai

T

ata Motors (TML) is gearing up for higher vehicle demand on the back of rising domestic and export sales through expansion and de-bottlenecking initiatives. Capacity expansions along with penetration in the newer geographies and market segments or vehicle categories are likely to take a front seat as the company acquires a more prominent stature as a global automobile manufacturer.

TML is expanding capacity at its Dharwad facility to manufacture additional products on the Ace platform. It is also planning to introduce additional variants in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle range as well as in the Prima truck range.

Additionally, the company is working on a diesel variant of the Nano, which is expected to kick start incremental volumes for the Nano, according to a recent company presentation to analyst.

The company has been consciously working on improving its brand image and global reach over the last few years. The efforts seem to be bearing fruits with JLR notching up record sales volumes and other models from Tata Motors stable gradually picking

Tata Aria

up in various overseas markets.

Overall, its CV sales grew by around 23 percent in 2010-11 to touch 458,828 units, including 262,177 units of light commercial vehicles and 196,651 units of Medium & Heavy Commercial Vehicles (MHCV), compared to overall CV sales of 373,842 units in the previous year. Total passenger car sales (including JLR and Fiat) of the company grew by 23 percent to touch 319,712 units, with utility vehicles comprising 180,091 units, mid-size cars contributing 96,455 units and compact cars remaining sales, compared to 260,020 passenger car units sold in the previous fiscal. The company took an average of 5.3 percent price increase across CV range last fiscal and four to six percent price increase in the passenger car division in FY2011.

Total vehicles sales at JLR grew by 26 percent to touch 243,621 units in 2010-11 as compared to 193,982 units sold in the previous fiscal. The increase in sales was largely led by around 43 percent increase in unit sales in China and Russia.

TML reduced the net debt on JLR’s books from Pound 603 million as on March 31, 2010 to around Pound 233 million as on March 31, 2011. JLR reported a profit after tax of Pound 1.04 billion for the last fi scal as compared to a loss of Pound 14 million in the previous fiscal.

The company attributed the turnaround to improved macroeconomic conditions, strong demand

(L-R) PM Telang, MD, India Operations, Tata Motors; Ralph Speth, CEO, Jaguar Land Rover; Ravi Kant Vice Chairman, Tata Motors; Carl-Peter Forster, Group CEO, Tata Motors

for products across markets and internal actions on increasing efficiency and cost reductions efforts in its communication to analysts recently.

Over the last fiscal JLR introduced new variants and models in order to increase visibility and get better positioning in the premium car market globally These introductions included Jaguar XJ , Jaguar XKR-75, Land Rover 11MY Freelander with 2.2l turbo diesel engine , new generation Range Rover edition and Discovery Landmark limited edition.

In a recent interaction with media at the new assembling line for JLR in Tata Motors’ Pune facility, JLR Chief Executive, Ralf Speth pointed out that there were around 40 new products and variants that were under various stages of conceptualisation and development at JLR and underlined robust product pipeline in the offi ng. JLR is likely to commence sales of Range Rover

Evoque this year and Jaguar C-X75 hybrid is under advanced development stage in association with William F1. China, Russia, India and Brazil have been identified as the key growth markets for JLR. Tata Motors has renewed its focus on the Nano’s international drive with a launch in Sri Lanka. It recently launched the Nano in Sri Lanka in distribution arrangement with Diesel & Motor Engineering (DIMO).

Additionally it also introduced five new commercial vehicles— Tata Divo luxury coaches and semi low-floor air-conditioned Tata Marcopolo buses for passenger transportation and the Tata Prima 4928 tractor-trailer, Tata 1618 truck and the Tata Super Ace, a high-end variant from the Tata Ace family for cargo movement in Sri Lanka.

It has exported over 516,000 vehicles across different markets globally in trucks, buses, passenger cars and utility vehicles over

the last five decades or so. The company exported 58,044 vehicles in 2010-11.

Tata Motors’ vehicles are exported to about 40 countries, in South Asia, South East Asia, West Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. The company’s international business also includes Tata Daewoo Commercia l Vehicle Company in South Korea, Tata Motors (Thailand), Tata Hispano Motors Carrocera in Spain and Tata Motors in South Africa. Additionally, it has franchisee/JV assembly operations in Ukraine, Russia, Bangladesh and Senegal.

Export volumes increased by 70.3 percent in 2010-11 to touch 58,089 units compared to 34,109 units sold in the previous fi scal. TML’s total sales including exports of commercial and passenger vehicles in May 2011 were 62,296 vehicles, a growth of 10 percent over 56,775 vehicles sold in May 2010.

26

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

HSCI explores localisation, exports Shambhavi Anand New Delhi

H

onda Siel Cars India (HSCI), the Indian version of four wheelers for Honda Motor Company, Japan, seems to be gaining a key role in its Asia operations. The Research and Development centre of HSCI, which is located in Greater Noida, is working towards increasing localisation of its products.

The young R&D centre, which was set up in 2009, has taken up localisation as its priority task.

As a part of this effort, HSCI has started manufacturing critical components like engine blocks, cylinder heads, and transmission cases among others in their new Tapukara plant. These products are also exported to other Asian countries. They were earlier imported from the parent com-

pany in Japan and supplied to the company’s plant in Greater Noida where most of the car manufacturing takes place.

It is also looking at increasing its exports to the Asian region.

‘Last year we started exporting components to Japan. This year we are looking at exporting some more components to Thailand. We should be able to start this by the end of this year,’ Senior Vice president, Sales & Marketing, HSCI, Jnaneshwar Sen said. The company is yet to disclose the components and also the volumes that it will export to the new destination. It will also start exporting to other Asian countries in phases.

As a part of its localisation drive, HSCI will also increase the number of their vendors in the country. Last year, it increased the number of vendors from 104 to 132, which is a growth of about

Jnaneswar Sen, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, HSCI

28 percent. Moreover, around 73 percent of its vendors are in the north, 16 percent in the south and only 11 percent in the western region. The concentration of most of its vendors is in the northern region of the country and so it is planning to expand the same in the southern region. ‘In addi-

In addition to high quality & low cost manufacturing, the suppliers are expected to develop design capability and manufacturing excellence for meeting future growth requirements tion to high quality and low cost manufacturing, the suppliers are expected to gradually develop design capability and manufacturing excellence for meeting future growth requirements,’ Sen added.

The company has recently decided to introduce diesel engine to the Indian market. ‘The rapid dieselisation and the rising price of petrol are the main reasons for treading this path. Our mother company in Japan is working aggressively on the new project. But it will still take several years for the diesel engine to come to India,’ Sen said. He also added that the models in which this engine will be put have not yet been decided. There is also a possibility for an entire new model with the diesel engine.

The total capacity utilisation of both the plants of Honda Siel by the end of FY11 was 60 percent.

Since its commencement, its second plant in Tapukara had been producing sheet metals and some engine parts. But now it produces for the first plant and also for exports to Japan and Thailand. The company might also start exporting to Malaysia and Indonesia later. The plant is located in an area of 600 acres out of which 150 has been allocated for suppliers.

The new plant situated near the Delhi-Mumbai Freight Corridor is modeled on lines of Honda Motor’s global plant. It has special focus on the environment.

A major portion of the manufacturing unit is zero discharge area and uses natural lighting to save power consumption. There are around 20,000 trees to preserve the green cover of the region.

Ferrari opens first showroom in India

I

talian sports car maker Ferrari, which is controlled by the Fiat SpA Group, entered the Indian market on 26 May, 2011 with the California, 458 Italia, 599GTB Fiorano priced at `2.2 crore (ex-showroom price Delhi), `2.56 and `3.37 respectively.

The entire range of Ferrari including the latest FF will be available to the Indian customer.

It has been priced at `3.42 crore.

An import tariff of more than 100 percent will be applied on all the models. It has appointed Shreyans Motors as their retail partners which has the exclusive dealership of Porshce and Ducatti. The Ferrari showroom will have three models on display.

After Delhi, the company plans to open its second showroom in Mumbai by 2012. The delivery period can range from three months to 12 months or more depending upon the kind of customisation the customer wants.

The company targets to sell 100 cars by 2014. ‘For us volumes don’t mean much. We sell 7000 units globally and have not come to India to increase our sales but because India is ready for Ferrari,’ Ferrari SpA Chief Executive Officer Amedeo Felisa said. India is the 58th country to become the market for Ferrari. The company claims that India already has 50 Ferraris running on its roads. It can be noted that luxury cars like Aston Martin and Ferrari’s rival, Lamborghini, are already present in the Indian market.

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16 - 30 June 2011

Hyundai explores new possibilities with Fluidic Verna Bhargav TS Chennai

A

fter an attempt to transform its approach to the market with Verna Transform, Hyundai Motor India has introduced Fluidic Verna.

The Korean car manufacturer has received around 5,000 bookings in the fi rst five days of its launch.

Currently it already holds bookings for about 12,000 cars.

The design of the car is based on the company’s new design philosophy–Fluidic Sculpture.

While Verna Transform was just a cosmetic upgrade, the new Verna Fluidic takes a completely new form comprising both, the interior and the exterior of the car. The new Verna is the seventh generation car and is built on a new platform, which took around five years to devel-

op incurring an expenditure of around `900 crore.

The Hyundai Fluidic Verna’s futuristic design lends the vehicle with the looks of a sports car. The

design concept is driven from the flowing streams in Switzerland, unique branches of African trees and shapely rocks in the Arizona desert, which is not featured in any

other car from Hyundai India.

The Verna was initially launched in India in 2006 and has proved itself as a successful car it its segment in India.

In a bid to keep consumer interest alive, Hyundai gave it a face lift and launched it as the all new Verna Transform, with a tagline ‘Dynamic by DNA.’ It featured ‘sharp eye’ headlamps, a new bumper design with a cascade mesh air dam (smooth and dynamic design) along with circular front fog lamps in trapezoidal bezels that make it much safer and easier to drive during the foggy winters. Moreover, the blue LED illumination was also introduced in the cockpit. However, in spite of all the upgrades and add-ons, the Verna Transform could not spike the sales to its favour.

Elaborating on the theme and

concept behind the design, the company’s Director, Sales and Marketing, Arvind Saxena said, ‘The Fluidic Verna sports the Hyundai Motor’s new design philosophy of ‘fluidic sculpture’. The design injects sophistication and dynamic angles as well as elegant lines into the shape of a vehicle. The exterior design is that of a dynamic and stylish mid-size sedan that’s modern, sporty and sleek. The Fluidic’s design concept continues in the sharp and elegant design of the interiors too. While the Y-shaped bilateral symmetrical crash pad layout highlights spaciousness, the bold character lines on the crash pad compliments the exterior design.’

The new vehicle is packed with an array of necessary safety features and effective safety technologies to enable occupant’s safety. It has been awarded a Five Star Safety Rating by C-NCAP (China- New Car Assessment Programme), making it one of the safest mid-size sedans.

The new Verna is equipped with first-in-class six airbags for occupant protection as a passive safety feature, while the EBD (Electronic Brake-force Distribution and ABS (Anti-lock Braking System) provide the much-needed active safety systems to help the driver control the car better.

Arvind Saxena, Director Marketing & Sales, HMIL

The philosophy of ‘Fluidic Sculpture’ also guarantees safety and stability of the car. In order to ensure overall strength and safety, the body of new model is built with high strength steel. External features like a ring type structure in the centre pillar area provides more strength and protection against side impacts.

Hyundai is also the fi rst to come up with ‘Rear Parking Camera’ (with display on the inside rear view mirror) in the mid-size sedan segment along with reverse parking sensors, which helps in ensuring safe and easy parking of the car.

The high-tensile strength steel that comprises 58.6 percent of the floor and chassis offers enhanced crash performance as well as reduced weight. Saxena said, ‘One of the essential safety features brought in by Hyundai in this segment is the automatic unlocking of the door on collision, which facilitates quick exit of the occupants.

Speed sensing auto door lock prevents accidental opening of the door while moving that adds to safety while driving. The car is also equipped with a clutch lock system that adds to the safety of the car when parked. Another important feature is the cluster ionizer, which improves the quality of air inside the cabin, he added. With this new thinking, HMIL hopes that Fluidic Verna will clock good numbers in the years to come.

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16 - 30 June 2011

GM India strategy for vehicle launches from SAIC stable T Murrali New Delhi

G

M India is aggressively working on the launch of the debutante vehicle from its joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp of China. Towards this, the company has set up a separate division and is scouting for dealers from across the country.

The new vehicle, which according to industry sources, is the Sunshine and will be categorised as a Multi-Purpose Vehicle (MPV). It will be pitted against the likes of Scorpio and Innova. The vehicle will be marketed under Chevrolet brand, which gave GM India the necessary push and a visibility in the Indian passenger car industry. The company is planning to launch an SUV and a pick up followed by the MPV launch. Latter it will have a hatchback and notch-back models.

Speaking to Auto Monitor, Vice President (Corporate Affairs), General Motors India, P Balendran said that the company will be introducing six new vehicles under the joint venture.

While the commercial vehicles will be rolled out from Halol the cars will be manufactured at its plant in Talegaon.

GM India has commenced work on setting up the retail outlets for its LCVs. According to him the company may not go only with existing dealerships. The strategy is to look at new entrants besides, giving preference to the existing players who can afford to create a dedicated retail outlet and service centres for LCVs. ‘These dealerships will be standalone as the customers are going to be different from those for passenger

P Balendran, VP, GM India

Ariel view of the Talegaon plant

vehicle,’ he said. Asked about the uniqueness of the company’s CVs he said, ‘It will be value for money, competitive price and quality,’ The SAIC collaboration, he said, is a huge advantage for the GM India as it will give access to competitive products. Besides, these products will be manufactured here, which will generate employment. ‘Initially we will consolidate our position in the domestic market before venturing in to exports,’ he said.

The Halol plant has been designed to make wide range of vehicles—from passenger cars to utility vehicles. Asked about the synergies that the company is looking at in manufacturing the new MPV and the existing Tavera, he said, ‘certainly there will be lot

of synergies and it was a strategic decision to make the new MPV in the same line where Tavera is built.’ Towards this the company is also setting up a press shop to help increase the quantum of in-house manufacturing. He is confident that there will not be any canibalisation between the impending MPV and Tavera.

Currently the Halol plant has a capacity to make 85,000 vehicles per year and is being expanded to make 110,000 units. This project along with the setting up of press shop will be completed in the current calendar itself, he stated.

GM India’s Talegaon plant, which is the second facility of the company in the country, has a capacity to make 1,40,000 units with a provision to add another

1,60,000 units a year. Keeping in mind the limitations of its fi rst plant in making the new models, the company has ensured thats its Talegon facility is flexible enough to make future models too. In addition, it has an engine plant as well with a capacity to make 1,60,000 units, which can be expanded to three lakh units.

Expansion has begun recently, but at a slow pace, which will help meet the emerging demands.

The company is planning to launch the diesel version of Beat in the second half of next month while the Euro IV compatible Tavera will be out in the market in the last quarter of this year. Though it has set a target to sell 1.6 lakh vehicles this year, he expressed his concern on the sof-

tening of the market. ‘We began to experience the slowdown from January,’ he mentioned.

The RBI has increased the interest rates at least nine times last year, which has made the cost of fi nance dearer. ‘We are in such a state that there is hike in interest rates, petroleum products and raw materials. Since the inflation has not been contained, the RBI might increase the lending rates further, which will affect the vehicle sales since over 85 percent of the vehicles are fi nanced,’ he said.

There was a time when sales will come only from metropolis but now it has changed. Earlier more than 60 percent of sales used to come from bigger cities and the rest from smaller towns but the trend has reversed with more contribution from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. ‘We currently have 239 sales and service outlets covering 186 cities across the country.

With SAIC products coming in we are planning increase to 300 sales and service points by the end of this year,’ he said.

Tata Motors’ Chakan plant provides assembling facility to Jaguar Land Rover Our Bureau Mumbai

T

ata Motors recently kick started the local assembly of premium brand Jaguar Land Rover adjoining its Chakan facility on the outskirts of Pune. The assembling facility is sufficiently flexible to handle larger volumes as per growing requirements in the near to medium term.

‘We are looking to enhance our brand presence and sales in India and are not immediately looking to export vehicles from India to any other markets,’ said Group Chief Executive Officer, Tata Motors, Carl Peter Forster.

He further pointed out that the

cost of assembling the fi rst few CKD units would be a bit more than the cost of importing the CBUs as the assembling line for JLR in Chakan is a new setup.

Jaguar Land Rover will assemble Land Rover Freelander 2 vehicles supplied in Complete Knock Down (CKD) form from Jaguar Land Rover’s Halewood manufacturing plant in Liverpool, UK. Though company officials did not give any indications on the number of vehicles likely to be assembled on a monthly or annual basis, the plant layout and logistics indicate that the company may be looking to assemble around 10,000 to 12,000 units per annum within the next couple of years.

The assembling line at Tata Motors’ Chakan facility in Pune is versatile with a mix of Indian and European employees. The facility in Pune will be subject to Jaguar Land Rover’s mainstream launch quality processes and will be overseen by manufacturing and quality managers who have moved to India from the UK. The range of premium luxury vehicles to be sold in India include Jaguar XJ, XF and XK, Land Rover Freelander 2, Discovery 4, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.

The Freelander 2 is available in India in two variants, the TD4 SE Automatic and the SD4 HSE Automatic. The prices start at `33.89 lakh (ex-showroom price in Mumbai, pre-octroi).

Pune Assembly Plant

The company officials point out that India will take a while to catch up with China where JLR sold 27,500 units last fiscal compared with 891 in India. JLR’s global sales were up 26 percent at 2,43,621 units last fi scal. JLR is developing 40 products in the next five years, including engine, body and chassis derivatives, according to Chief Executive, JLR, Ralf Speth.

Tata Motors acquired Jaguar Land Rover in 2008 for around $2.3 billion on a cash-free, debt-free basis. The purchase consideration included the ownership by Jaguar and Land Rover or perpetual royalty-free licences of all necessary Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs), manu-

facturing plants, two advanced design centres in the UK, and worldwide network of national sales companies, according to company’s earlier release.

The long term agreement for supply of engines, stampings and other components to JLR was also part of the original deal. Other areas of transition support from Ford include IT, accounting and access to test facilities. The two companies will continue to cooperate in areas such as design and development through sharing of platforms and joint development of hybrid technologies and powertrain engineering. The Ford Motor Credit Company provides fi nancing for Jaguar Land Rover dealers and customers.

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER SPECIAL

Auto Monitor

31

PMP to enter more segments, expand presence Our Bureau Mumbai

P

MP Components is looking to enter commercial vehicle wiper systems business in addition to other market segments within automotive sector globally in its effort to gain around 10 percent of the global marketshare for wiper systems.

‘Our immediate priority is to consolidate our existing position in the wiper systems business gained through acquisition-led growth. We are looking to develop reliable Tier II and Tier III supplier base to meet our growth and quality objectives. We are fi nding this very difficult task to develop our supplier base,’ said Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, PMP Auto Components, SN Somani. The company is aiming for around 20 to 25 percent growth in the cur-

SN Somani, MD & CEO, PMP Auto Components

rent fiscal and would be investing around `80 crore in augmenting its capacity over the next couple of years. It is also looking at inorganic growth opportunities in niche and windshield washing systems business.

PMP has manufacturing setups in Satara, Rudrapur and Mumbai. The company is major supplier of alternators, oil pressure switches and windshield washer systems to OEMs like Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra, Eicher, Piaggio, Escorts, Ashok Leyland, John Deere, Fiat, Simpsons, TAFE, Cummins, KOEL, SameDeutz and Force Motors. The company has started strategic sourcing activities in Asian countries to maximise local contents for its Indian operations.

PMP Components acquired w iper ma nufacturer PA L International based in Czech Republic from Canadian Auto Group, Magna International for

Assembling line at Satara plant

an undisclosed sum in 2008. It subsequently shifted operations of the company to its subsidiary Bakony in Hungary making Bakony, the European base for PMP Auto Components. PAL International’s customers include OEMs like Volkswagen, Skoda, Fiat, Peugeot-Citroen and Volvo.

The turnover of PAL International stood around `125 crore last year. PMP is targeting around seven percent market shares with both, the European acquisition and additional business gained subsequently as a part

(Left-Right) PMP Components’ Satara wiper systems facility

of consolidation. It aims to raise its production capacity to around 3.2 million units for wipers from existing around 1.3 million units.

PMP is setting up additional

line at its Satara plant for supplying wiper systems to Volkswagen globally as well as Maruti with initial production plans of around 500,000 units. Additionally, the

company is setting up a new R&D and innovation centre in Prague, Czech Republic.

Hungary based Bakony Wiper Systems was acquired in 2007

and has played a key role in consolidation of PMP’s Europe business. Bakony supplies wiping systems to Suzuki and GM mainly in Europe.

32

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FOUR WHEELER SPECIAL

Charging forward: electric vehicle survey T

hroughout its 100+ years of existence, the automotive industr y has been a constant pioneer in the innovation, development and integration of advanced technologies. That drive continues to exist today as the industry collaborates across multiple sectors to address broader sustainability challenges in a quickly evolving global environment.

One of the more newsworthy initiatives to achieve these common goals is the production of Electric Vehicles (EVs). While many of the determining factors for the success of EVs have been identified, such as development of a suitable infrastructure and continued cost reduction of batteries and their supporting systems, other variables continue to be a matter of debate.

While automotive companies search for innovative ideas to spur advanced-technologies, create new product designs and develop viable infrastructure solutions, a noticeable sense of urgency has emerged to bring alternative fuel applications to market.

In large part, this is due to various emissions and fuel economy regulations around the world (ie the 35.5 mpg CAFE standard in the US for 2016, and further legislation proposing ~60 mpg CAFE by 2025). Collaboration between relevant cross-sector participants (automotive, energy, utilities, cleantech, etc), as well as private and public interests, will be essential in meeting these requirements and achieving significant reduction in Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

Certainly, there has been plenty of cooperation and investment to date. Government incentives, including low interest loans and grants, along with private investment, have allowed for key initial investments to be made in developing a sustainable future for EVs. However, the question remains: What does the future hold for EVs? Addressing the key issues mentioned herein will play a major role in determining the fate of EVs, but ultimately, it will be the consumer that decides the size of the opportunity.

The PwC EV Survey: Charging Forward, was developed to provide a check-up on some of the major determining factors for the success of EVs in the near, mid and long-term. More than 200 participants from the automotive, utilities, energy, technology, government, fi nance, education and other sectors provided their feedback. Key results have been included, along with additional thoughts from PwC on the present and future outlook of EVs. The survey fi ndings cover a range of issues.

What Consumers Want Automakers, particularly in the US, have struggled at times to achieve the flexibility (and in some cases the willingness) to develop and produce vehicles that consumers want to buy. Thanks to the fluctuating fuel prices, economic turmoil, and changing government policies, consumer preferences can change at a rapid pace. However, automakers are making strides to adapt more quickly to these changes.

The majority of respondents (68.8 percent) believe hybrids and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Respondents believe consumers will choose Hybrids and PHEVs Q. Which alternative fuel technology do you feel currently offers the best mix of cost effectiveness and practicality (ie ease of use, accessibility, etc) to consumers?

60%

40%

37.1% 31.7%

20% 7.9%

7.9%

4.5%

6.9%

4.0%

0% Hybrids

E85/Flex-fuel

PHEV

PEV/BEV

(PHEVs) are the most appealing to consumers overall.

Thirty-seven percent of the respondents felt that hybrids offer the best practical business case of currently available alternative fuel technologies, followed closely by PHEVs, which received 31.7 percent. While no alternative fuel occupies significant share in the marketplace, traditional hybrid vehicles (such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape Hybrid) hold roughly 2.5 percent of US market share. And some technologies such as E85 (flex-fuel which contains 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) have been in the market longer than hybrids, they have failed to gain significant share. It should be noted that share for E85 is difficult to accurately determine. Millions of E85 capable vehicles are on the road today but few consumers actually utilise the flex-fuel function due to the added cost, decrease in fuel economy, and limited availability of the fuel. Other technologies such as Pure Electric Vehicles (PEVs) and PHEVs are just beginning to be rolled out, and face their own unique roadblocks to market penetration.

Autofacts, PwC’s internal forecasting group, predicts that hybrid vehicles will continue to lead the way in alternative fuel market share. This is primarily due to reduced cost for the technology as a result of third and fourth generation development and a rollout of numerous vehicles with available hybrid powertrains. By 2020, hybrid vehicles (mid and full) are forecasted to comprise about five percent of global annual production, while EVs (PHEVs and PEVs) will account for roughly 2.5 percent.

The Price Is Right With price premiums for EVs currently starting around $15,000, it seems they still have a long way to go to compete head to head with existing technologies in the market, even when taking into account government incentives.

Companies continue to work on achieving a balance between investing in development of new technologies and passing these costs to the consumer. So why would potential customers be willing to pay such a premium for an EV? The majority of respondents indicated long-term cost savings (41.6 percent) is the primary reason. This suggests most think buyers must be offered an economically sound business case to purchase an EV. It seems there will always be a select group who are willing to pay a high premium as fi rst adopters, who aren’t primarily concerned by the cost equation. This is evidenced by the respondents (32.2

Hydrogen

Other

Not sure

percent) who felt consumers would be willing to pay a premium because of their ‘green’ conscience. However, based on the previously mentioned market share of current hybrid offerings (|2.5percent), this does not appear to be representatives of mainstream consumers.

Overcoming The Odds Bringing the cost of EVs in line with Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) vehicles remains a key challenge to achieve widespread adoption among consumers.

Survey respondents indicated mul-

availability (8.4 percent), and development of new and unproven technologies (7.4 percent) will also be major contributing factors that will result in a slow rollout of EVs. In order to achieve long-term cost savings, two things must happen. First, fuel prices must continue to rise, and second, costs for EVs must come down… a fairly simple cost equation. How much fuel prices must rise and how much EV costs must come down is debatable. The payback period for an EV can escalate quickly depending on the premium, but even in a best case scenario it is still well beyond the average length of vehicle ownership in the US, which is currently around 5.5 years.

EVs must also fight with an increasingly savvy consumer, who has become more aware of important variables such as interest rates, fuel economy, incentives, quality ratings and residual values when they are looking to purchase a new vehicle. When asked what price premium they thought consumers were willing to pay for a PEV and PHEV, the top responses by far were zero-$5,000 (48.2 percent for PEV, 49.5 percent for

Respondents believe price will determine purchasing decision Q. What, if any, is the primary reason that consumers would be willing to pay a premium for an EV? 60% 41.6%

40% 32.2%

20% 11.4%

7.9%

5.4%

0% Styling/ performance

tiple issues that EVs must overcome to increase overall market share.

More than half of the respondents (51.4 percent) said that cost and lack of acceptable driving range were the primary disadvantages of EVs. This is more of an issue for PEVs than PHEVs, although the ability to travel on pure electricity is limited for both types of vehicles.

Nearly a third of those surveyed (30.8 percent) said that EVs must have a minimum driving range of 101-150 miles in order to compete with traditional ICE vehicles. Vehicle cost rapidly increases with each added mile of battery capacity. This is the primary barrier attributed to limited range.

Furthermore, the lack of infrastructure (21.8 percent), lack of

Tax credits

None

Other

PHEV), which would essentially put them on par with traditional hybrid and diesel applications.

With price premiums for EVs currently starting around $15,000, it seems they still have a long way to go to compete head to head with existing technologies in the market, even when taking into account government incentives.

Show Me The Money Now, onto the broader issue of funding and developing a modernised infrastructure. The top response to who should bear the primary cost burden was ‘all of the above’ (35.3 percent), which includes government, utilities, local municipalities, private interests and others. In addition, utility companies are installing smart

Global: Hybrid + EV Assembly Forecast* 2010–2020 (Millions) 10

10%

*EV = PEV + PHEV, Hybrid = Mild + Full

9

9%

8

8%

7

Energising EVs In 2020 As demand for EVs grows, what energy sources will be used to provide power to them? From a sustainability standpoint, determining the ideal energy sources is critical. Many have argued that EVs don’t actually reduce emissions if the power sources they are receiving electricity from further pollute the environment (ie coal, oil). The emissions tradeoffs between ICE vehicles and EVs powered by ‘dirty electricity’ is and will remain an issue of concern, and the need to shift the nation’s grid to cleaner, renewable energy sources is clear. Today, almost 50 percent of US electricity generation is provided by coal.

Shifting from fossil fuels will take time, but incremental progress is still a step in the right direction.

New developments in renewable energy sources like solar and wind offer optimism for a continued shift to clean energy.

Considerations For Success

1.5% “Green” Long-term conscience cost savings (strictly to help the environment)

metres in homes, municipalities are modifying their planning to include charging stations, and private investors continue to work on development of quick charge and battery swap systems for residential, commercial and industrial applications. While this initial ‘all in’ effort is extremely encouraging, continued collaboration is necessary to expedite the development of a high tech EV infrastructure. Key stakeholders must also understand that it will take years, perhaps decades, to fully mature and be capable of supporting EVs as a mainstream and viable automotive option.

Today, successful companies acknowledge the importance of proactively engaging in the dialogue and providing a viewpoint that will reshape the automotive industry and infrastructure of tomorrow.

As new opportunities and challenges continue to emerge, it remains important to continue to closely monitor the progress being made in each of the key areas discussed. Collaboration remains a key element of addressing those challenges, as multiple sectors (automotive, energy, utilities and cleantech) unite to forge a new and exciting path with the opportunity to fundamentally change the world in which we live.

Given the perpetual concerns related to fossil fuel use, few doubt the inevitably bright future for EVs. But like all great advancements, sufficient time, resources and policies are critical of alternative fuel vehicles in China. Autofacts is forecasting production to eclipse 27 million units by 2017. Today’s investments are expected to pave the way for future EV success on a global scale, but in the interim, the automotive industry must continue charging forward.

7%

6 6% 5 5%

4

4%

3 2

3%

1

2%

0

1% 2010

2011

Hybrid

2012 EV

Source: Autofacts Analysis

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Global Hybrid + EV Share (R-Axis)

2018

2019

2020

(The feature has been authored

by PwC. Views expressed are personal.)

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16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

Diesel cars thrive on operating cost benefits

O

ver the last two years, car sales in India have jumped considerably across all segments. And accompanying that growth in sales is a gradual but marked shift in customer preference towards diesel vehicles. Diesel cars witnessed about 10 to 15 percent more growth than their petrol siblings in the last two years.

Experts say that this has happened over time, largely due to ever-increasing petrol prices. Though diesel prices have also increased, the difference between the two will remain, and this is a critical factor for customers looking at diesel cars, in a bid to save more money.

Even though diesel vehicles usually cost more than petrol ones, customers prefer a diesel car due to its reduced price.

The average cost per kilometer for a diesel car is `two while it is `4.50 for the petrol car. For instance, a customer who is traveling around 2,000 km a month with an average mileage of 16 kmpl in a diesel car can save around `5,000 on the cost of fuel.

According to dea lers, another factor behind the shift is that around 70 p e rc ent cars are bought after taking a loan. This is critical, as buyers a re now w i l ling to spend that little bit extra (diesel cars are usua lly dearer than the petrol version) towards the Illustration: Jayasree cost of the car and compensate the higher EMIs with the savings accrued on account of lower fuel costs. Ultimately, the cost of owner ship will be at par with the petrol cars.

During the last six months, there have been six revisions in petrol prices that has led to around 16 percent rise in prices. Hence, the worries for petrol vehicle owners have intensified.

However, diesel prices have been increased by around 4.5 percent during the same period. This is

because diesel pricing has not been deregulated by the government yet.

Diesel is likely to remain cheaper than petrol, because increasing prices of this fuel will affect the economy with spiraling inflation, due to higher transportation costs, which will in turn, result in increase in the prices of all commodities.

Transportation by road takes

care of more than 70 percent of all freight movement in India and this is a major factor that might prevent diesel prices from a substantial increase, at least in the foreseeable future.

A nother genera l opinion about diesel is that it is a polluting fuel. However, the stringent emission norms driven several technological advancements in diesel engines making it much cleaner in terms of emissions. ‘The new clean diesel technology has reduced diesel

emission to near zero for newer engines and equipment. The proven programmes like the Diesel Emission Reduction Act (DERA), which is prevalent in several developing economies including the US, are vital for our country to support modernisation of older diesel engines,’ said a car dealer.

Recent ly, Ford Ind ia announced its plans to invest $72 million in the engine manufacturing facility, which will manufacture 80,000 diesel engines more per year.

To offer more diesel variants to the customers, t he cou ntry’s largest car exporter Hy undai has invested around `400 crore towards its new diesel engine plant.

At present, Tata Motors is one of the few players selling more diesel vehicles than petrol cars. Sources say that the diesel variant accounts for up to 80 percent sales of the Indica, and around 70 percent sales of the Indigo. German auto major Volkswagen’s main selling models are Polo and Vento and the company gets 50 percent of its sales from diesel variants.

According to a Tata Motors dealer, ‘Nearly 90 percent of the utility vehicle segment runs

on diesel and the dieselisation trend is now catching up strongly in passenger car segment also.

Furthermore, rising difference between petrol and diesel retail prices are encouraging more and more buyers to opt for diesel vehicles.’

As the demand of diesel is reaching heights, more and more car companies are planning to roll out diesel variants of their existing models. Auto industry experts commented that since the running cost of diesel cars is lower as compared to petrol cars and with government taking no initiative in making petrol prices lower, consumers are now keeping diesel cars in their preference list. No doubt petrol cars will never cease to exist, but there are many diesel variants expected to enter into the market soon.

Photo: Bhargav TS

Photo: Bhargav TS

Bhargav TS Chennai

16 - 30 June 2011

Auto Monitor

FOUR-WHEELER SPECIAL

35

Akmal Rahman B Chennai

T

ata Motors is planning a marketing strategy that comprises a slew of initiatives to push the world’s cheapest car Nano to the next level. Nano reported a sale of 10,012 units for the month of April, which is 184 percent higher than the same month last year. In May, it clocked 6,515 units, which was 84 percent higher than May 2010, but it dropped by 65 percent when compared with the April 2011 figures. The company, through its dealers, has framed a number of attractive schemes to rope in more costumers after a drop in sales to 509 units in November 2010, the lowest since its launch in March 2009.

According to most of the dealers across the country, the reason for the sales drop was a fire accident and non-availability of easy finance schemes.

Besides, the huge order that the company received after the launch and its failure to deliver the vehicles on account of shifting its plant from Singur to Sanand, hit hard. Also, there is a perception amongst the end users that they do not mind paying more for more comforts, in terms of the feel and in actual running of the car. The company made efforts to satisfy the Nano customers and to regain its position in the market. It launched many offers like special finance schemes, extended warranty upto four years and maintenance contract of `99 to win back customer interest.

Another strategy is displaying the Nano at Future Group’s Big Bazaar outlets around the country. ‘We have the Nano car permanently displayed at the Big Bazaar; around a 100 enquiries are generated every month, out of which 30 to 40 percent are converted in to sales’ said Varun Pawha, Managing Director, Pawa Motors, New Delhi. The presence of Tata Nano car at the Big Bazaar outlets, register around 18 million footfalls every month, helps the company identif y potential customers to boost the sales. ‘We give different offers every month’ he added.

To draw more buyers, the company is also providing gifts such as gold coins and cash vouchers.

Tata Motors Finance (TMF) has provided a special Tata Nano finance scheme, under which a customer can get a loan up to even 100 percent of the car’s cost. Already Tata Nano comes with a four-year or 60,000-km (whichever is earlier) manufacturer’s warranty, at no extra cost. ‘We organise door-to-door campaigns to create awareness about the new offers and financial options provided by Tata Motors. The doorto-door campaign helps us to raise the sales’ said their Team Leader, TAFE Reach, Chennai, Hariharan.

Tata Motors has introduced an option of 100 percent finance without any down payment. ‘As a part of its promotional activity, Tata Motor Finance offers 100 percent financial option to people of a lowincome group who want to buy the Nano. The customers can just pay life tax, registration and insurance to get the vehicle’ he added.

The dealers are campaigning Nano cars in rural areas by offering test drives to cover untapped customers. ‘On receiving an

enquiry, we take Nano to the customer’s place and offer them a test drive. We also send our team to rural areas every week to promote the car by offering test drive to farmers too,’ said Team Leader corporate sales, Concorde Motors, Chenna i, Venkatesh L. The company has also launched an exchange scheme in which customer can purchase a Nano in exchange of their two wheelers.

‘We exchange bike and car for Nano, which is taken through Tata Motors exchange programme.

We are offering an extra ‘fi ve thousand for two-wheelers and ‘ten thousand for four wheelers

Illustration: Akmal Rahman B

New initiatives may boost Nano sales

in addition to the current market rate, while exchanging the vehicles. We also take the cars to residential apartments, IT com-

panies, shopping malls and to events’ he added.

Dealer Sales Executive, KB Motors, Kolkata, Charles Michael

stated, ‘We are working on new marketing strategies to help us raise the sale numbers. Our future plans are to create awareness and to increase expand our DSA (Direct Sales Agents). Most of the dealers say that they have huge inventories and they can deliver the cars within a day. ‘We can deliver the car immediately after booking because we have enough stock with us’ said Team Leader, TAFE Reach, Chennai, Hariharan N. The car that was supposed to be for the masses at one time is gathering dust at its manufacturing facility in Sanand. Are the marketing and various promotional activities proving to be successful for the company? Only the market and the sentiments of end consumers can decide the future course for the cheapest car in the market.

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16 - 30 June 2011

Kenwood tunes to aftermarket to boost sales T Murrali Chennai

I

n-car entertainment major Kenwood Electronics has drawn aggressive plans to focus more on the aftermarket to shore up its revenues further. Towards this commitment ,the company is augmenting its ‘Products Seminar’ with more technical content besides conducting the programme in more places in India.

The senior manager of Kenwood Corporation, India Liaison Office, Takeshi Shinmen said that the company has already conducted the product seminar in Kochi, Chennai and Pune this year. It plans to organise similar programmes in seven more cities in addition to the technical seminar in Delhi, which will, in addition to the regular course, cover instal-

(L) Takeshi Shinmen, Senior Manager, Kenwood, India Liaison Office & David Tan Tiah Wee, Senior Manager, CE Consumer Dept, Kenwood Asia Headquarters, (R) Kenwood DPX-U5120 iPod car stereo

lation and application of in-car entertainment. ‘We will be focusing on navigation systems this year, as it is an untouched market. Kenwood is the first Japanese company to introduce it in India.

Besides, India is evolving and the customers’ needs are increasing. Supporting applications like Bluetooth, USB, multimedia, DVD players, reverse camera etc., will help the customers to have all

the facilities in one unit, he said.

Earlier, these facilities did fi nd application only in high-end models, but now it will be extended to the mid-segment also as affordability among people is increasing,

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he pointed out.

Asked if the company would look at setting up boutiques to facilitate customers, Shinmen said it will be done in consultation with Kenwood’s sole distributor, Nippon Audiotronix based in Noida. Nippon has been associated with the Japanese company for about 18 years now. Kenwood has its own retail outlet in Tokyo, Japan and another in Amsterdam.

‘If set up in India, it will be only for branding and educational purposes,’ he said.

Currently about 40 percent of the total sales comes from the aftermarket and the rest from OEMs. In India, Kenwood caters to several OEMs including Maruti Suzuki, Ford India, Hyundai Motor India, General Motors India and Mahindra, commanding over 80 percent market share in the OEM market. The target, according to Shinmen, is to get an equal share from OEMs business and aftermarket in two to three years.

‘The aftermarket is increasing because of the expansion of the market base and not at the cost of the OEM market. The customers are also changing their purchasing style,’ he said.

In order to increase the share of business from the aftermarket, the company is aggressively pursuing a 360 degree branding exercise. It will also be focusing on promoting India specific products and look at options to promote the brand through several other channels including the FM Radio network.

Presently the company has about 600 dealers across the country. While it will continue with the existing dealers, Kenwood’s priorities will be to make every dealer get more business, since it will be a win-win for both. The company is also contemplating on sourcing components from India but is yet to take the fi nal call, he said.

Yet another strategy for the incar entertainment manufacturer is to enter Tier II and Tier III cities, which will create brand awareness besides boosting sales from these markets. The Senior Manager (CE Consumer Dept, Sales Planning, Kenwood Asia Headquarters, David Tan Tiah Wee said, ‘We will focus on end customers and educate them, who will then demand for quality products from the OEMs’.

This chain reaction will help not only the customers to get quality products but also support sales for the company, he added. The key area of evolution for the company is functionality emphasising more on connections with diverse devices like the iPod, iPhone, SD Card, USB and Bluetooth. Besides, the company is also offering easyto-operate systems that reduce operational time while enhancing features and performance. Most of the models offer plug and play connections for modern gadgets and equipment. These seminars will help the company to communicate the features of its products better, he said.

Of late, Kenwood is facing the heat of competition from the cheaper products, especially from the Japanese manufacturers. According to Shinmen, cheap pricing is not healthy as one has to look at the lifetime of the products. It is the cost of ownership that is crucial. ‘We would like to keep everyone in the value chain, from the manufacturer to the distributor, dealers and the end customers, happy—as the product should be experienced, he said.

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER SPECIAL

Auto Monitor

37

Real time traffic update on your PND soon Nabeel A Khan New Delhi

M

apmyIndia, Delhibased digital map and Personal Navigation Device (PND) provider, is all set to enliven the driving experience with an array of new products. The company is gearing up to launch version 7 of its map and real time traffic update system by the third quarter of this financial year.

The new version of map will have the residence number details of around top 50 cities and additional Place Of Interests (POIs). The current version 6 contains maps of 18 top cities with house number details, maps of 1027 cities, four lakh POIs and six lakh villages.

MapmyIndia is a brand owned by software company CE Info Systems, which claims to have employed over 400 surveyors for the last 15 years to collect data for mapping and they are continuously working on improving and updating the maps. The company has 700 employees working from its head office in Delhi and regional centres in Bangalore and Mumbai.

The map builder has recently introduced a camera which could enable the driver to see the rear view on the screen of the navigation system. The company is also very soon going to introduce a high tech navigation and complete car entertainment system—IN DASH AVN (Audio Video & Navigation) priced at `40,000.

The other car accessories recently introduced by it is a car locator. The device can be accessed from any personal computer or laptop through a login id and password provided by the company every six months. The user can log in and check the exact position of the car from anywhere. It will also provide logs for a period of six months containing details of the movement of the vehicle in the whole period. MapmyIndia hopes that this product will contribute a good share to the revenue.

Currently, it offers a premium version of multimedia PND at `20,000 with hardware from a Vietnam-based manufacturer— Mio, while the entry level product costs around `8,000.

In order to increase its dominance in the market, it has been regularly involved in value additions. Under this strategy, nine Indian regional languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Tamil have been added in the voice guidance of the PND recently. It has also introduced 3D image of the place of interest in top four cities including Delhi and Mumbai.

‘We got lots of negative feedback from Indian drivers for having only foreign languages option in the voice guidance, so we have introduced regional languages and it has helped in boosting our presence. Today, we hold over 80 percent of the total automotive PND market in the country,’ Director, CE Info Systems, Rohan Verma told Auto Monitor.

Its PND is sold in the aftersales at all the authorised dealerships of the major car manufacturers including Ford Motors, Maruti Suzuki, and Fiat Toyota. While the company offers line-fit to the OEMs like—BMW, Hyundai, Ford. The BMW seven series, five series and Hyundai i20 Astra were

Rohan Verma, Director, CE Info Systems

the latest cars to be equipped with its devices in line-fit.

MapmyIndia claims to have grown over 600 percent in the last four years and the main driver was increase in the volume of the sales. Without divulging

any fi nancial details, it emphasised that it relied on volume to bring down the cost of the product tremendously. The entry level device was costing around `22,000 in 2007 which came down to `8,000 by 2010. It is talking to a number of hardware providers in China in order to bring down the cost further.

The digital map manufacturer has also bagged a number of deals from the government agencies including defence, police and planning to expand its business in the sector.

It is also making inroads in the neighbouring and other emerging economies, but will keep the main focus on the Indian market.

It has recently introduced maps

in Nepal and Sri Lanka in mobile and other applications and working on entering the automobile sector very soon.

‘We might be expanding to other markets but our core

focus will remain in India. We will try to keep adding value to the services in India primarily. The country has immense scope and opportunity,’ Rohan Verma explained.

38

Auto Monitor

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

16 - 30 June 2011

GKN to grow in HEV segment, invests `130 crore Our Bureau Mumbai

G

KN Driveline is in the process of expansion across its Asian facilities and is looking to invest around $50 million per annum over the next five years in the region. It has also introduced propeller shafts and differentials in the Indian market thus making a bid to emerge as a full scale systems supplier to vehicle manufacturers in India. The company would be focussing on offering value prepositions for company vehicles and low cost platforms under development at various OEMs in India and across Asia.

‘We are looking to expanding our presence in driveline systems and components. We are focussing on offering advanced products in ‘All Wheel Drive’ systems and e-Drive systems in key

growth markets,’ said Managing Director, Asia-Pacific, GKN Driveline, Marc Vuarchex. He added that GKN is already in different stages of talks with vehicle manufacturers in India and China for eDrive systems but may follow a consortium approach in dealing with OEMs. The company has developed e-transmissions offered with GKN e-Drive family products targeted to achieve top speed of around 130 kmph and acceleration performance of zero-100 kmph in 11 seconds.

The e-Drive system was developed by GKN in association with Nissan in 2002 and GKN has been working over the last decade with other European customers on this technology for improvements and better adaptability.

Peugeot and BMW are in the process of adapting the e-Drive technology for their respective

platforms developed in partnership with each other.

GKN derives around Pounds 2.4 billion from its driveline business globally. The revenue of the company stood at around Pounds 5.4 billion in 2010. The company supplies systems and components in automotive, powder metallurgy, land systems and aerospace sectors. Its major product segments include CV joints and sideshafts, propeller shafts, transfer units, AWD couplings, disconnects, differentials, limited slip, eAxles and eTransmissions.

Some of the new technologies that the company is looking to introduce in India and other developing markets include advanced engineered systems like monoblock tubular shafts and other driveline products for premium models. ‘We have already

Marc Vuarchex, MD, Asia-Pacific, GKN & Ravindra Ojha, MD, GKN Driveline India

introduced several advanced technologies and localised production for various Volkswagen group brands including Audi, Skoda and other brands due to

high volume production and market evolution. We are hoping that the Indian automotive sector continues its upward trajectory,’ said Vuarchex.

‘We work on the model of R&D centre for development of advanced technology and application engineering centres in key markets for further adaptation of the technology to suit local market needs. Most technologies in the developing markets have already been developed and are being adapted by us and we are looking at the prospects of establishing R&D centre,’ said Managing Director, GKN Driveline, Ravindra Ojha.

The company officials pointed out that China is likely to be a much bigger market for electric vehicle related technologies with the support and incentives from government. ‘Our key objective is to provide affordable technologies through local development and engineering and our investments are geared towards meeting that objective,’ said Vuarchex.

GKN Driveline currently has three facilities in India including Dharuhera and Faridabad in National Captial Region (NCR) and Oragadam in Chennai. It is setting up a new facility in Pune to be operational by early next year with investments of around `130 crore. The Pune facility will have capacity to manufacture 600,000 sideshafts for customers like Volkswagen, Fiat, GM, Tata Motors, Piaggio and Renault. The Pune facility would also develop differentials in association with Tata Motors and Fiat. The Pune facility would be equipped for further expansion to manufacture up to 1.2 million sideshafts in the second phase without significant addition in land and establishment. An addition of 1.2 million sideshafts can be undertaken at the Pune site by bringing additional 6,400 sq metres under development. The company’s Pune facility would be the fi rst to manufacture VL joints in India with a capacity of around 360,000 units per annum. Differentials would be manufactured at the Pune facility in the second phase.

The Pune facility is also likely to be equipped with application engineering and testing centre.

The company is working on new platforms and models from va r ious OEMs i nclud i ng Hyundai’s ‘small’ car, Honda Brio, new Tata Safari, new Ford Fiesta, diesel versions of Tata Nano and Chevrolet Beat, Nissan sedan (codenamed X H-5), Maruti Suzuki’s YP8 DSL2011 and Nissan’s K9K. Most of these platforms or models are slated to be launched this year or early next year.

16 - 30 June 2011

Auto Monitor

CORPORATE

39

Tata Nano begins international journey with Sri Lanka Tata Motors celebrates 50th year of international business

S

ri Lanka has become the fi rst international market for the Tata Nano, with the people’s car being commercially launched in the country recently. The introduction of the Tata Nano in international markets comes on the Golden Jubilee of Tata Motors’ international business which too, began with Sri Lanka in 1961 in association with Diesel & Motor Engineering PLC (DIMO), the company’s distributor.

In the 50th year of its presence in Sri Lanka and partnership with DIMO, Tata Motors is also introducing in the country fi ve new commercial vehicles—Tata Divo luxury coaches, semi lowfloor Tata Marcopolo buses for passenger transportation; for cargo movement, the Tata Prima 4928 tractor-tailor, Tata 1618 truck and the Tata Super Ace, a

Essar Steel wins award for value engineering

M

aruti has conferred an award to Essar Steel in recognition of the latter’s contribution to value engineering for its passenger cars that account for about 50 percent market share in the country.

At the recently held Vendors Conference in Singapore, Maruti, a venture of Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corporation, commended Essar Steel’s continued and sustained efforts to bring value to customers through its products and services.

Shinzo Nakanishi, MD, Maruti, conferring the award to Vikram Amin, Executive Director, Essar Steel

(LThe award was presented by Managing Director, Maruti, Shinzo Nakanishi to Executive Director, Essar Steel, Vikram Amin.

Essar Steel is the only steel company which has bagged this award from one of the largest auto manufacturers from across the globe. The approval from Maruti is recognition of Essar Steel as the preferred supplier of world class quality products in the automotive sector. Its value proposition for using specially developed customised hot rolled products in place of a cold rolled products for many of the critical components resulted in substantial cost saving and enhanced production. Maruti conducted a series of stringent tests on the product performance before the same was accepted.

In addition, the commissioning of compact strip mill, opens up new opportunities for Essar Steel to develop more such value- added hot rolled products for Maruti. The company also has a dedicated product development and application engineering team which works closely with customers to propose value engineering for cost saving, involve from conceptual design stages to fi nal launch and advices on the right material for the right application.

(L-R) PM Telang, MD, India Operations, Tata Motors; Ranjith Pandithage, Chairman, DIMO; Gahanath Pandithage, Deputy CEO, DIMO & Carl-Peter Forster, MD & Group CEO, Tata Motors launching the Tata Nano in Sri Lanka

high-end variant from the Tata Ace family.

Speaking on the introduction of the Tata Nano in Sri Lanka, Managing Director and Group CEO of Tata Motors, Carl-Peter

Forster said, ‘Tata Motors has already established a fi rm footprint in international markets.

We will now scale up on this foundation, judiciously choosing appropriate geographies

and addressing unmet consumer needs with our portfolio. The Nano will play a major role in the next phase of growth of our international business.’

Managing Director,India Operations of Tata Motors, PM Telang said, ‘The stupendous international response to the unveiling of the Tata Nano in 2008 established that customers across the world were awaiting such a car. With the launch in Sri Lanka today we begin that journey. We have already formulated plans for its introduction in several countries, to be implemented over the next few years.’

The Chairman of Diesel & Motor Engineering PLC, Ranjith Pandithage said, ‘The Tata Nano is a marvel in automotive engineering. We in DIMO are proud to bring it to Sri Lanka. The 50th

year of partnership between Tata Motors and DIMO is a momentous occasion and we are committed to taking the business to new heights.’

To Sri Lanka, Tata Motors has exported over 69,000 commercial and passenger vehicles.

The company’s portfolio of commercial vehicles comprises the entire range from small trucks to 49-tonne prime movers, and from 14-seater buses to luxury coaches, while the passenger vehicles portfolio, already includes Indica Vista, Indica Vista 90, Indigo CS, Indigo Manza and the Safari.

Also, in association with DIMO, Tata Motors has established a Technical Training Institute in Jaffna and begun work on a Driver Training School in Hambantota as part of community development initiatives.

40

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

Mahindra Reva to be ‘Born Green’ Bhargav TS Bangalore

N

ot only manufacturing green cars, Mahindra Reva is setting up its new greenfield facility in Bommasandra near Bangalore. The new plant, which is under construction will be ready in another couple of months, can roll out 30,000 vehicles annually. There have been several new and fi rst of its kind initiatives taken by the company to use the natural resources.

The company’s Chief of Technology and Strategy, Chetan Maini said, ‘the new manufacturing facility is unique from several things, the area which we are trying to make something green are not only our products but also how the vehicles could be manufactured through green initiatives.

The plant has natural lighting and ventilation and solar energy will be used significantly to generate electrical energy; I think this will be a unique initiative from the green point of view. Each car that would be produced would get its fi rst charge from solar which is our philosophy of Born Green.’

In terms of manufacturing the company is currently has a capacity to make 6,000 vehicles per annum and currently in the ramp up phase. The unit will be fully automated and have state-ofthe-art machineries. According to Maini, ‘the current Reva was manufactured manually by pushing the vehicles to the next stage, but in the new facility it is fully automated.’ Fixturing is automated and coupled with safety electronic checks besides, having a sophisticated dynamometer to test the vehicles’ performance under all conditions. It has a training centre to upgrade skills of the people

on specific areas that are suitable for electric vehicle technology, he added.

Speaking on the technology up gradation Maini said, ‘we will be launching our next generation electric car NXR next year which has a lot of design changes to cater different customer requirements.

The core technology encompasses the next generation energy management systems, which took us five years to develop. The first generation took even little longer – up to six years. In the second generation we had the option of using lead acid battery and lithium ion battery for wide range of requirements. We also have few power train options for different markets and varied performance levels,’ he said. The car is also integrated with telematics. In addition to the regular charging it has a new technology offering an option for quick charging in which a 15-minute charge can help run the vehicle further for about 40 km, he said.

‘We not only make cars which are green but the way they are made is also green, which we call ‘Born Green’. In the upcoming new facility we are re cycling the water used in manufacturing and testing. We will be using the natural resources to the maximum to produce our cars,’ said Mahindra Reva’s Chief Operating Officer, R Chandramouli.

Mahindra is helping Reva in three aspects; first, it is providing funds for expansion, second, a huge backing in supply chain and engineering support and fi nally, giving ability to expand very quickly in distribution.

Asked about foraying into two wheeler segment, Chandramouli said, ‘For the moment, the focus is on M&M’s four wheelers. We are

Chetan Maini with New Mahindra Reva cars

The plant has natural lighting and ventilation and solar energy will be used significantly to generate electrical energy; each will get its first charge from solar which is the philosophy of Born Green exploring the synergies with M&M since we can access the huge supplier base of Mahindra. With issues such as climate change and carbon footprint taking the centre stage globally, eco-friendly transportation has become the need of the hour. The electric vehicle market is hence, poised to grow rapidly. Mahindra’s extensive distribution network, coupled with our unique finance plan will help us make significant inroads into the local market,’ he said.

The electric carmaker is currently rolling out the Reva-i across six cities in the country, Pune being the latest. Chandramouli said the electric cars are being retailed through select M&M dealerships. Apart from capacity, the company is also looking to ramp up distribution. Currently, it is available in 20 cities; the target is 100 outlets next year.‘If we leverage the supply chain and when the volumes ramp up in three years, we could see advantage (in terms of pricing) and this will be passed on to consumers,’ he said.

Elaborating on new technologies offered by Mahindra Reva, Maini said, ‘In the current Reva we are using lead acid batteries

and we will be offering lithium ion batteries also in current Reva’s and future cars. So lithium ion batteries are approximately four times lighter and therefore you will get lot more range. The vehicles can operate much better in extreme temperatures especially in cold conditions without changing the performances and have much larger life. It also help get recharge faster. They are more expensive but you get far superior performance. So we have several battery technologies available and we will let consumers make their choice.’

On improving the efficiency of the vehicles, Maini said there are five key areas that would help to improve mileage; firstly it is the weight of the vehicle. It is addressed using space frame technology unlike regular cars that embraces monocoque design, which is about 15 percent lighter. The same technology is used in race cars and also on high performance vehicles where weight is also vital. Despite, being expensive the technology offers light weight advantage. The company also uses thermoplastic panels that are light and the construction is unique as it allows to

reduce the weight further. Since the reduction in rolling resistance will increase the performance of the vehicle the company uses special silica tyres.

At the heart of the vehicle is the energy management system that delivers the right flow of energy. The coefficient of performance of any compressor in the air conditioning unit of an automobile is at 1.5 but the one used in Reva cars has more than three, offering 50 percent more efficiency. Alongside it consumes 50 percent lesser energy to give the same performance. These are some of the technologies that the company is looking at to reduce energy consumption while enhancing performance. The company is working on 30 to 40 areas to improve overall performance.

According to the car maker Mahindra Reva has recorded a three-fold rise in average monthly sales in the last three months.

‘Following the 20 percent subsidy announced by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) the average monthly sales have tripled, compared to the average sales in the last year,’ Chandramouli said.

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

Auto Monitor

41

Rising cost of ownership to impact passenger vehicle Revati Kasture, Head, Industry Research, CARE Research Vishal Srivastav, Analyst, CARE Research Kunal Maheshwari, Analyst, CARE Research

T

he Indian PV industry had a dream run in FY10 and FY11 after a dismal performance in FY09. This growth was mainly driven by the strong revival in liquidity scenario and improvement in consumer confidence due to rise in income levels.

Almost all the players achieved impressive growth rate riding on such a healthy market condition.

The attractive prospects of the industry also pulled many global automobile biggies to enter the market. Indian players also responded with new launches with improved technology and styling at affordable prices.

of the vehicles are purchased on loan fi nance basis. Hence constant up-movement in interest rates during last five-six months have increased the operating cost of the vehicle substantially.

Escalating Fuel Prices Macro-Economic Conditions CARE Research believes, recent rise in interest rates and continuously increasing fuel prices, combined with expanding inflation may dent consumer confidence to some extent. It has been observed that PV demand is majorly influenced by fi nancing scenario; more than 85 percent

Trend and growth in the PV industry

Apart from interest rates, escalating fuel prices especially of petrol during last one year has affected the cost of operating a vehicle considerably. It has been observed that during last one year there have been seven revisions in petrol prices which has increased its retail price by almost 21 percent. However, the diesel car owners have some respite until now, as the increase in the diesel prices has been much lesser. Nevertheless, government plans to increase diesel price by `three–four would also raise the operating a diesel cars as well.

Influencing Buyer Decisions

Source: SIAM

Percent

Growth of EV sales across two years

Source: CMIE

Rise in fuel prices

The slashing of excise duty on small cars during FY06 from 24 percent to 16 percent and further to 10 percent in FY09 proved as an encouraging move for passenger vehicle market, as product prices could remain stable enabling demand to grow at a CAGR of around 14 percent during FY06FY11 period. Although fuel prices especially petro,l moved northwards due to constant revisions, positive sentiments owing to healthy liquidity scenario and rise in income levels helped to keep demand at healthy levels during most of the period in last five years (barring FY09, when tightening in liquidity condition slowed down PV industry growth).

However, during last 11 months, there have been seven revisions in petrol prices since

Impact of monthly EMI due to rise in interest rates EMI Calculation - Popular passenger car Apr’10

Apr’11

On Road Price

5,50,000

5,50,000

Loan to Value

85%

85%

Interest Rate

9%

12%

Tenure (Months) EMI (in `)

60

60

8,828

9,309

Difference (in `)

its de-regulation in June 2010, and the prices have increased by almost 21 percent. An increase of such a magnitude in petrol prices has never happened in the past.

Furthermore, the spiralling inflation level and high interest rates during last two-three months have further dented consumer affordability levels significantly.

In order to capture the impact on affordability levels, CARE Research has build an index explaining the increase in the minimum threshold income required to purchase a small car.

It was observed that, in FY11, inflationary pressure, combined with increase in petrol prices and interest rates have considerably pushed the target income levels upwards, thus impacting consumer confidence significantly.

481

Negating Adverse Conditions CARE Research believes the impact of macro-economic conditions and rising fuel prices may undermine the growth in PV industry. It estimates that the growth in PV would be around nine percent during FY12. However CARE Research believes that the monsoons levels this year would be the key monitorable to determine the inflationary scenario as well as demand from rural market that has been picking up in the past.

(The report is prepared by CARE Research, a division of Credit Analysis & REsearch Limited [CARE]. Views expressed are personal.)

42

Auto Monitor

FOUR-WHEELER CORPORATE SPECIAL

16 - 30 June 2011

National Instruments’ tools keep Ford at T he challenge was to develop an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) for an automotive fuel cell system capable of demonstrating significant progress toward achieving a commercially viable fuel cell system design that is competitive with conventional internal combustion-based powertrains.

The Solution: Designing and implementing a real-time embedded control system for an automotive fuel cell system using the NI LabVIEW Real-Time and LabVIEW FPGA modules, and an NI CompactRIO controller; also verifying the system with the LabVIEW and a real-time PXI chassis Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) system.

At the forefront of innovation Since

1992,

Ford

Motor

Company has been dedicated to Fuel Cell System (FCS) R&D. Despite our significant progress, several deficiencies have prevented FCSs from becoming a commercially viable technology that is competitive with conventional internal combustion-based powertrains.

Our attempt to eliminate these deficiencies began by demonstrating significant improvements in areas such as system lifetime and freeze starting.

In conjunction with our groundbreaking FCS design, we developed a new control system using rapid prototyping. Changes occurred during development while the design team iteratively refi ned the design through verification following the systems engineering V-model. These design changes often affected the interfaces between subsys-

(L) GUI of the HIL system (R) Block diagram of the CompactRIO FCS controller system

tem components such as the air compressor control module and the fuel cell control module.

Even though ECUs have been widely successful for production vehicles, better choices for rapid prototyping control systems exist. Instead of modifying production ECU I/O circuits to adapt to interface changes, we used CompactRIO to rapidly

prototype our Fuel Control Unit (FCU). With CompactRIO, we quickly adapted to the design changes and experimented with new sensors and actuators for novel design solutions.

We implemented an HIL system that comprised an NI PXI8186 controller in an NI PXI-1010 combination PXI/SCXI chassis with associated PXI and SCXI

I/O cards, including a Controller Area Network (CAN), to verify the control strategy functionality embedded in the CompactRIO controller. The HIL system, implemented with LabVIEW Real-Time, has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that provides manual and automatic input stimuli to the ECU to validate the control strategy operation while displaying the CompactRIO I/O feedback on the HIL monitor. The HIL system validation was very successful, and we only had to make minor changes to the strategy after the CompactRIO began controlling the actual FCS plant.

Performance When You Need It Automotive powertrain control demands real-time performance.

To provide the determinism required for real-time performance, the LabVIEW Real-Time Module delivers a commercial Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for the selected controller.

When we switched from using an NI cRIO-9002 to an NI cRIO-9012 embedded real-time controller to boost performance, the LabVIEW Real-Time automatically switched from a Pharlap RTOS to a VxWorks RTOS. With NI products working to support the RTOS implementation, our team focused on delivering a fuel cell control system instead of RTOS details.

CompactRIO automation controller

The FCS controller receives various inputs from sensors, actuators, and other controllers and systems within a vehicle.

The CAN, now ubiquitous in automotive designs, transmits and receives a significant majority of the I/O within and outside the FCS. During laboratory testing, we simulated master vehicle control by an extensive test stand based on LabVIEW, which communicated via CAN to the slave FCS controller. For these reasons, the CompactRIO CAN support is critical for automotive FCS applications. When we needed more performance for our CAN implementation, NI quickly provided a recently developed method for supporting CAN on the faster, VxWorks-based platforms, such as the cRIO-9012. In addition to enabling the use of the CAN channel API, the new CAN frame channel conversion library was even faster than before, thus reducing our development time.

NI products have always been well-known for supporting an open system architecture. Its Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) easily imported CAN message databases devel-

16 - 30 June 2011

FOUR-WHEELER SPECIAL

forefront of innovation oped in a tool by another CAN manufacturer. This feature allowed us to exchange databases without translating or recoding CAN message databases.

Seamless Technology Integration For this project, we implemented the control strategy with the LabVIEW Professional Development System in conjunction with two add-on modules.

First, we used the LabVIEW RealTime Module to implement the software in real time to program the real-time controller. Next, we implemented the FPGA-based software using the LabVIEW FPGA Module to conduct all of the I/O including CAN. Both of these add-on LabVIEW modules seamlessly integrated into the LabVIEW development environment, and graphical differencing was one of the essential LabVIEW features that we used.

LabVIEW VIs were backward compatible, we reused VIs that were developed more than 10 years ago as a basis for our HIL system. In addition, our laboratory test system, based on NI hardware and LabVIEW, easily stored test data in the Technical Data Management Streaming (TDMS) file format for analysis in NI DIAdem data management software. Along with normal data visualisation, we used DIAdem to rapidly and automatically search through multiple data files to find any performance anomalies and graph them with annotations. Finally, NI technical support—a key criterion for success—has always been the best in the industry.

Fuel cell car (P2000)

Owner, Narayanan Menon enters the Limca Book of Records

T

he Tata Manza (Quadrajet Aura ABS) has clocked an incredible mileage of 46.33 km per litre. This feat has been achieved by Narayanan Menon, a resident of Coimbatore who has zoomed into the Limca Book of Records.

Ford has a long history with NI, and we have used LabVIEW to develop various aspects of every fuel cell electric vehicle that we produce and to successfully design and implement a realtime embedded control system for an automotive FCS. Managing Director of Aromen Engineering, Narayanan R Menon, a proud owner of the Tata Manza has been certified

for the remarkable drive on the Coimbatore-Avinashi bypass on 25 May, 2011. Menon’s Tata Manza covered a long stretch of 72.3 km on road by consuming only 1.58 litres of diesel, which translates to an incredible mileage of 46.33 km per litre.

A mechanical engineer, Menon himself does not credit an amazing mileage to a ‘magic foot’ rather a combination of good driving and car maintenance. For a country where fuel efficiency is a significant factor for automobile ownership and with fuel prices increasing, the feat certainly bodes well for the mileage conscious customer.

We have used LabVIEW to develop and to successfully design a real-time embedded control system for an automotive FCS.’ Kurt D Osborne, Ford Motor Company In addition, the NI Real-Time Execution Trace Toolkit quickly became an important tool to help solve chronometric issues. Using this toolkit, we found areas of the real-time embedded code that were not performing as expected, and then optimised the code to ensure correct real-time performance. Without a product like the NI Real-Time Execution Trace Toolkit, we would have needed expensive external test equipment such as in-circuit emulators and logic analysers.

While some developers have difficulties while implementing version control, due to the excellent integration of LabVIEW with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe version control programme, which we used during software development, we successfully and seamlessly integrated version control. With a simple rightclick on the source VI icon in the LabVIEW project window, we can display a list of functions such as fi le check in or check out. Easyto-use software is critical to gain developer support for version management software.

WMW CW 400 500 0 00 Investments for Greater Productivity The WMW CWK machining centers have proven themselves on the market in countless applications, as all-round machining centers providing high flexibility, performance and accuracy.

They are suited for the complex machining of the most varied workpieces in steel, cast or light metals.

Why LabVIEW We developed the control strategy for our fi rst internally designed FCS using LabVIEW for several additional reasons.

First, the number of developers required to implement our standard software development process exceeded the available resources. However, by using LabVIEW, we had a larger pool of resources because several engineers already had experience with LabVIEW and others had been trained. Second, with the natural synergy between the software developed for the rapid prototyping controller and the test stands, which were already developed using LabVIEW, VIs could be shared, the development environments were the same, and the hardware was similar.

Third, because modular

Please visit

OPEN HOUSE @ our Tech Centre on 24th - 25th June 2011 Bangalore

43

Tata Manza clocks mileage of 46.33 kmpl

Narayanan Menon with his Manza

(The case study has been authored

by National Instruments. Views expressed are personal)

Auto Monitor

44

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

CORPORATE

HP looks for partner for car wrap business Nabeel A Khan New Delhi

L

everaging on the increasing popularity of vehicle wrap, the graphic solutions business division of Hewlett-Packard (HP), has recently showcased digital printers for vehicle wraps at the Indian Sign + Digital 2011 (ISD2011) in New Delhi and looking for business partners who could offer the service.

‘This will give a good option for people to jazz up their vehicle with a colour and design of their choice.

We see that normal painting takes time and is costly but wrapping can be done easily and with less time and it is durable for at least two years so it will open a new option for the customers,’ Country Business Manager, Signage, Imaging and Printing Group, Hewlett Packard Sales, Paresh Shetty said.

Paresh Shetty, Country Business Manager, Signage, Imaging and Printing Group, Hewlett Packard Sales

HP will be offering this service by setting up a design centre where all the integrated facilitydesigning, printing, wrapping can be available at one centres. One car can take around six hours for the full wrapping and designing.

‘We are talking to some entrepreneurs for setting up the design studio for this and we would be primarily looking for the dealers, spare part seller with adequate space for accommodating printer and cars,’ Shetty pointed out.

Vehicle wrap being done in Delhi

‘The company has tied up with Auto Graphic Digital in Bangalore and very soon will be announcing its partner in Delhi.

It will give an option to print on vinyl any design or colour of individual’s choice with complete

exclusivity. Being done digitally, it has the advantage of bringing multiple design and graphics on the wrap.

The durability and quality of the wrap can depend on the material used. The wrap material could

The company has tied up with Auto Graphic Digital, Bangalore and will announce its partner in Delhi. It will give an option to print on vinyl, any design of the individual’s choice with exclusivity.

Being done digitally, it has the advantage of bringing multiple design and graphics on the wrap

be thicker or thinner depending on the choice of the user. ‘This will be equally good as paint and could also be used as substitute for it. Suppose you have been driving a car for many years and now you want to change and make it look different you can do it with the help of the car wrap within few hours,’ Shetty added.

Vehicle wraps have been in style with fun loving trendy auto admirers who love to customise their vehicle and broaden up their style statement. HP’s SCITEX printers’ series will facilitate customers getting the best quality of prints in water - based Latex technology. During ISD 2011, HP made a live demonstration of vehicle wraps creation so that customers can experience the process and appreciate the versatility of this growing highly popular creative medium.

It has the option to print on vinyl with a design or colour of individuals’ choice with complete exclusivity. Being done digitally it has the advantage of bringing multiple design and graphics on the wrap.

‘These printers use HP patented LATEX inks which are water-based and odourless, hence requires no special ventilating system at the print service provider’s premises. Thus, they pose no health hazard to the workers and are also good for home applications like wallpaper printing,’ Shetty explained.

The wrap could cost around `150 per square and the minimum of 10 feet print can come in one time. So the minimum expenditure for one time wrap could be at least `1500.

46

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Interarch’s Chennai plant to cover automotive business Nabeel A Khan New Delhi

Projects handled by Interarch

I

nterarch Building Products, one of the largest makers of metal ceilings, blinds, metal roofing and pre-engineered buildings in India is shifting its Noida (NCR) plant to Chennai in order to tap the growing automotive market in the region.

Driven by prominent growth in the automotive industry, the company hopes to rebound to its pre-recession level by next year.

Its revenue stands at around `330 crore in this fi scal year, which was over `600 crore in 2008 (pre-recession).

The leading pre-engineered steel building maker already has two plants in Uttarakhand—one in Pantnagar, Rudrapur spread in around 12 acre and another 25-acre facility in Kichha—to cater to the needs in northern part of the country. The Kiccha

An Interarch project under construction

plant was built during the recession period.

Interarch, which builds the majority of automotive plants in India, has already moved its roofing line to Chennai and the other lines will be operational in the following months. It has a total manufacturing capacity of more than 1,50,000 MT per annum of steel building structures and

over 40,000 MT per annum for its Tracdek Roof & Wall systems.

Projects in the automotive sector contributed around 35 percent of the total revenue of this leading metal building products manufacturer and integrated structural steel construction solutions provider in the present calendar year. However, the automotive industry has contributed

Neolite plant

over 65 of its total revenue in the last five years.

‘Now every month we get around 25 inquiries from the automotive industry and five to seven percent of those get converted,’ Head, Marketing, Ishaan Suri told Auto Monitor. By the fourth quarter of 2010, it received a good response and orders started coming from automotive com-

Tata Motors’ plant

panies after a dull regime due to recession. Although the enquiries during recession did not drop much, due to the increase in price and lack of liquidity, potential clients who were looking for cheap work initially, are now looking out for the best project execution.

It has bagged around 25 projects from automotive companies including OEMs and

Ishaan Suri, Head, Marketing

component makers in the last six months. The company has also received an offer from Mahindra & Mahindra to build a new plant in the western part of the country soon. The company has built over 100 plants of automotive companies since 1990s and Tata Motors is its major customer. The SingurNano plant was also built

by Interarch. Moreover, it has built the Tata Motors’ Dharwar plant where low f loor buses are manufactured.

The Noida-based company claims to use all the latest techniques for Greenfield projects which includes gutters, pipes (downtake pipes), louvers, ventilators—ridge/turbo ventilators, pipe flashings, roof curves, flashings, ease trim, ridge capping, cable trim, skylight (FRP or polycarbonate), roof curbs, insulation and weld mesh.

A green building has a certain amount of ventilation and interaction with the environment, as to how much toxic and good energy it is giving or taking from the outside. It provides a natural ventilator—turbo ventilator, gravity ventilator which lets the hot air out. In a pre-engineered metal building, the option of having natural ventilator is highly effective.

The company fi rst visualises the whole building in three dimension through the software before starting the work.

So the whole plant is fi rst built in the software before the actual work starts. Thus, there is no work on the site, it pre-designed and just fitted with a special bolting technique.

The company is setting up a separate infrastructure division to take care of projects related to non-automobiles. ‘The biggest advantage is that we are a true turnkey company. As a turnkey, we are the actual design and manufacture and project execution company,’ Suri added.

16 - 30 June 2011

TVS Logistics ties up with Ross school of business Our Bureau Chennai

Hinduja Foundries to expand Our Bureau Chennai

H

induja Foundries will invest `70 crore to increase its capacity and technology upgradation. The major part of the investment will go into expanding the capacity in Ennore plant from 55,000 ton to 68,000 ton, said the Managing Director of Hinduja Foundries, B Swaminathan.

The company has so far invested around `230 crore at its Sriperumbudur facility near Chennai. It also has two plants— at Ennore and at Hyderabad, with a cumulative production capacity of 143,000 ton of grey iron casting and 3,000 ton of aluminium gravity die-casting.

B Swaminithan, MD, Hinduja Foundries

‘The investment would help the company to increase its capacity to 168,000 tonne in a time frame of 18-20 months. Of the proposed investments, significant portions would go to Ennore plant and we will be installing new assembly line there,’ he added.

Hinduja Foundries is also eyeing opportunities to acquire companies in overseas and they are also in talk with three companies— one in Latin America and two in Europe, which will help them to double their revenue. Hinduja Foundries Chief Financial Officer, V Sankar said, ‘We are planning to increase our exports, currently the contribution from exports is very minimal and we want to increase it to 15 percent.’

Meanwhile in 2010-2011 Hinduja Foundry registered a 41 percent growth in turnover to `551 crore against `392 crore last year. This is due to increase of production of castings during the year, which is 34 percent higher (88,545 tonne) than the output of last fi nancial year. ‘We envisage further improvements with growing demand from domestic and international customers,’ Swaminathan added.

(L) Prof MP Narayanan, Faculty Director, BlueLEAP, University of Michigan with S Ravichandran, Executive Director, TVS Logistics exchanging the signed MoU in presence of R Dinesh, MD, TVS Logistics Services

the supply chain. The individual capability will also be further improved due to the programme.

After completing it, they will get a degree from University of Michigan, equivalent to an MBA,’ he said.

The reason for providing this service is to gain practical knowledge that will help the company

and the individual grow equally. Professor of Ross School of Business, MP Narayanan said. ‘A unique feature of the programme is that executives will be expected to immediately apply what they learned in the classroom to resolve problems and issues that are relevant and important to their company.’

49

Harrison Motors offers exchange programme

H

T

VS Logistics, part of the TVS Group has tied up with US-based University of Michigan as part of a threeyear programme to enhance the skills of senior and middle-level executives.

At a press conference, the company’s Managing Director, R Dinesh said that the executives working at TVS Logistics services in Chennai would be trained on areas like logistics, managerial and supply chain management, conducted by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

The company would select 30 of 820 senior executives for the unique-tailor made programme.

We will be completely redefi ning the skills of executives within

Auto Monitor

CORPORATE

arrison motors recently launched four models of All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) christened Junior (50cc priced at `1.5 lakh), Striker (110 cc - `2 lakh), Fighter (150 cc-`2.5 lakh) and Terminator (200 cc-`3 lakh). It is offering the ATV with a one year warranty.

The company’s plant at Karad, when commis- The ATV (Inset) JS Bhavnani, Chairman, sioned by March 2012 Harison Motors Gujarat & Goa. The company and set up with an investment will expand to North India and of around `300 crore, will have South India by next year. The a capacity to manufacture 15,000 company also organised an ATVs per month. Apart from ATVs, exchange mela between June 13 the plant will produce 2.5 lakh to 15 in Pune to provide an incenbikes, scooters in the fi rst year. tive for potential customers for In the initial phase, Funty will be the ATV offering. sold in Maharashtra, Karnataka,

50

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CORPORATE

First PaintExpo Eurasia 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey

T

he fi rst PaintExpo Eurasia will take place at the Expo Center Istanbul in Turkey from the 6-8 October, 2011.

Already, roughly 65 percent of all available booth floorspace has been booked for exhibitors from eleven countries, who will cover the entire process sequence for industrial coating technology. The Eurasian offshoot of the leading international trade fair for industrial coating technology will thus present comprehensive, representative offerings right from the fi rst event.

Turkey, as well as other countries of the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), have been experiencing an above average economic growth for a number of years. As a result, these countries comprise an attractive market for suppliers of equipment and services in the field of industrial coating

technology. This is not in the least substantiated by great exhibitor interest in the first PaintExpo Eurasia, which is being organised by FairFair GmbH together with their Turkish partner Artkim Fuarcilik, and will be held concurrent to the TurkCoat trade fair for paints and chemicals in Istanbul from the 6-8 October, 2011.

Roughly 50 percent of the exhibitors will be from Turkey, and the rest from ten additional countries. ‘We assume that PaintExpo Eurasia is going to be a one of a kind event in the region, especially with the professional touch

of an international fair organiser.

Istanbul has always been a getaway between east and west and it’s relatively close to the MENA and Asia Pacific regions where one third of all global paint business is conducted. By participating at PaintExpo Eurasia we want to get more business coming our way.

And this event will eventually help us to make it happen’, said Export Manager of Turkish company Iba Kimya Sanayi ve Ticaret AS Rippert Anlagentechnik GmbH & Co, Ogün Okyar.

Another company, KG has also recognised the opportuni-

ties which are offered by a coating technology trade fair in Istanbul, ‘At the moment we’ve received one order from Turkey, and we assume that we’ll be able to pick up lots of other interesting project and customers from this market.

This is one of the issues we want to explore while participating at the first PaintExpo Eurasia. However, another goal is to find on-site partners with whom we’ll be able to develop appropriate market presence within the region. The fact that we already know and trust FairFair as an exhibition partner also played a role in our decision,’ explained the Marketing Manager for the equipment manufacturing firm, Martin Köster. Italian paint manufacturer Colorificio Damiani S.p.A. expects certain results concerning its participation, ‘I think that the Turkish market is starting to resemble the European one

and is getting closer and closer to European quality standards.

That’s why we consider Turkey as a market to supply. Through our participation at PaintExpo Eurasia, I expect to get in contact with potential dealers who may help us develop the local market’, stated CEO Stefano Damiani.

Spectrum of Industrial Coating Technology ’We’re very pleased with the highly positive feedback from exhibitors from Turkey, Germany, Italy and other countries. Because strong participation by companies from all sectors of the industrial coating technology industry makes it possible for us to present visitors at the first PaintExpo Eurasia with comprehensive, representative offerings’, said Managing Director of event promoter FairFair GmbH, Jürgen Haußmann.

Auto World Expo 2011 in Chennai

B

enchmark Ex hibitions India is organising Auto World Expo 2011 in Chennai. The four-day expo at Chennai Trade Centre, scheduled to begin on June 23, which is supported by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association, Federation of Indian Higher Purchase Association, Motor Sports Clubs and Chennai Regional Indian Oil Dealers Association.

The idea is to create a 360degree infotainment event that revolves around automobiles, where the distance between the eager and curious enthusiast and the eminent creator of the vehicles is reduced to just one step.

The expo would be bringing together OEMs, accessory manufacturers and automotive aftermarket under one roof setting a valuable stage for more than 200 exhibitors to showcase their products to over 50,000 aff luent visitors from across south-India.

ICAT holds seminar on LPG, CNG technology

T

he International Center for Automotive Technology (ICAT), a division of the NATRiP Implementation Society (NATIS), organised a seminar on ‘CNG Component And System Approvals’ which emphasised on the need for compliance to the international standards like the ECE R110 for the European Homologation.

The one-day seminar, which was jointly organised by ICAT and Tuv Nord, a certification, testing and technical monitoring agency, discussed the successful implementation of CNG and LPG retro fitment in different types of vehicles across India. This has given the component industry the confidence to focus on the Indian market and also export of this technology.

The seminar was attended by more than 70 representatives of CNG/LPG component manufacturers/ retrofitter solution providers and testing agencies, senior officers of ICAT and experts from Tuv Nord Germany.

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with parallel or sequential process

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Centralized or decentralized media supply unit

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CORPORATE

Akmal Rahman B Chennai

A

mul Polycure, Chennai based polyurethane injection moulded component manufacturer is planning to upgrade its facility to manufacture new plastic components.

‘We are planning to manufacture new components like gear knobs and dashboards for which, we have received enquiries from a couple of customers’, Managing Director, Amul Polycure, Amul Kumar, told Auto Monitor.

The company has also planned to expand its unit by investing in additional machines to manufacture the new components in this fiscal to meet the increasing demands from the market. ‘We are going to increase the capacity by expanding our facility and by installing new machines to cater the rising demand on plas-

tic components in the market,’ Amul added.

It is in to manufacturing glove boxes, seats armrests, moulded seats, backrests, headrests, window edges, steering wheels and f lexible seats. Speaking about the company’s profile Amul said, ‘We are making plastic injection components and polyurethane components from the past five years’. Currently the company manufactures and supplies individual components like dashboard gloveboxes to Ashok Leyland, armrests and window edges to Irizar-TVS, seat armrests to Tatra Vectra Motors and integral skin foams to Indian Railways. It makes five thousand to 30 thousand components per month.

The company has a semi-automated production system with high-pressure injection- moulding machines to manufacture

Photo: Akmal Rahman B

Amul Polycure to expand facility; make new components

(L) Amul Polycure automotive products (R) Amul Kumar, MD, Amul Polycure

three polyurethane moulding machines and two plastic injection-moulding machines to expand its capacity.

The ma nufacturer uses

high quality components. It has also installed a conveyor system in production line, to make the production of components faster. Recently it has installed

“Spearheading a productivity movement in metal working” Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association

Our Bureau New Delhi

V

olvo Buses introduced its 8400 low f loor CNG city bus in Delhi recently. The event was graced by Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, A mbassador of Sweden to India, Lars-Olof Lindgren, and Managing Director, Volvo Buses India, A kash Passey among other dignitaries.

A-

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2011

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Hurr ipt of Ab ece 011 or R ate f 0 June 2 D t 3 Las

Volvo 8400 CNG debuts in Delhi

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PR

CTIVITY CH DU A O

around seven tonnes of polyurethane raw materials every month to supply automotive components. Amul stated that ‘Polyurethane plays a major role in automotive component manufacturing because it is used to make components like aquatic controls, roof linings, steering wheels, dashboards, seating and carpets, so it is a very significant raw material in automotive industry’.

The company was established in 1995 to meet a segment of the furniture industry, which later diversified its product portfolio into the automotive industry and last year, it registered a turnover of `12 crore and is targeting 50 percent additional growth this year due to new product launch. Today the company has leading customers like Irizar-TVS, Ashok Leyland and the Indian Railways.

IM T

IMTMA - SIEMENS Productivity Championship Awards 2011 invites

Manufacturing professionals in metal working

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Top 2 Entries in each regions will win cash prize of Rs. 25,000 and automatically qualify for entry into the competition at National Productivity Summit

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National Productivity Summit 2011

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Cash prizes in each stream I Prize Rs. 1,00,000 II Prize Rs. 60,000 III Prize Rs. 40,000 with Trophy & Certificate

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10 October 2011 15 October 2011 21 October 2011 4 - 5 November 2011

Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Co Ltd

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Ace Designers

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Amararaja Batteries

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Aztec Auto Ltd

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Bajaj Auto

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Bharat Electronics

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BHEL

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B’joy Informatics

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Bosch Ltd

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Clutch Auto

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Cummins India Ltd

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Reliable Autotech Pvt. Ltd

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SKF India

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Hema Engineering Industries Ltd

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Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd

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Kirloskar Toyoda Textile Machinery

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Laxmi Oil Pumps & Systems Pvt. Ltd

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Lucas TVS

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Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

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Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd

Sona Koyo Steering Systems Sundaram-Clayton Ltd Sundram Fasteners Ltd (TVS Group) Tata Toyo Radiator Ltd TVS Motor Company Titan Industries Ltd (Jewellery Division) Ucal Fuel Systems Ltd

MICO Bosch

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Rane Engine Valve Ltd

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Rane (Madras Ltd)

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Wheels India Ltd Yuken India

Last date for submitting Abstracts : 30 June 2011 For details contact : Mr. Augustine Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association 10th Mile, Tumkur Road, Madavara Post, Bangalore - 562 123 Tel : +91-80-66246600, 66246902 Fax : +91-80-66246658 E-mail : augustin@imtma.in Website : www.imtma.in

The Volvo City Bus is operating in 12 cities in the country and its fi rst CNG variant made entry into the national capital city with support from the Delhi Transport Corporation.

Over the years Volvo Buses India has established its credibility in offering the best urban transport solutions. We already have a majority share in the lowfloor diesel AC segment, and are confident of consolidating this position with the CNG variant,’ On the safety front, new CNG City Bus boasts of having an active protection system that cuts off the ignition at the time of refueling.

The CNG city bus will be built at the company’s plant in Hoskote near Bangalore. The vehicle also houses the new transmission from Volvo-Ecolife, which aims to offer the driver and passengers a superior drive experience.

It offers significant fuel reduction opportunities due to a fi ne-tuned optimised gear system which operates at the most efficient speed ranges in terms of fuel consumption. The price of the bus was not disclosed by the company.

The vehicle is equipped with 8300 cc, in line six cylinders CNG driven engine that is capable of generating 280 horse power at 2400 rpm. More importantly, this engine manages to make 1151 NM of torque at just 1400 rpm. The Volvo CNG Bus claims to have the best power to weight ratio in its class and this translates to ease of driving long durations around the city.

Vital LINK between

Manufacturers and End-Users

INDIA’S FIRST MAGAZINE FOR THE AUTOMOTIVE AFTERMARKET

To know more: Call us at 022 3003 4651 OR write to aftermarket@infomedia18.in

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CORPORATE

Akmal Rahman B Chennai

I

nca Radiant Engineering (IRE), the Chennai-based manufacturer of fi lters and allied components, is planning to manufacture polyurethane foam fi lters to cater to the demands of its customers. Operating for the last 19 years, the company has been manufacturing automotive components like oil fi lters, fuel fi lters, air fi lters, power steering oil fi lters, tank body for heavy vehicles. Currently, it makes one lakh to 1.5 lakh fi lters per month.

‘We are in a consolidation phase; once our fi nances improve, say in about six months, we plan to install some new equipment to manufacture polyurethane foam fi lters; We have orders from a couple of custom-

ers,’ said the Managing Director of IRE, Pranav Mehta in a recent interaction with Auto Monitor.

IRE was supplying filters to State Transport Corporation since 1992 but discontinued four years later due policy changes in the supply of components from SMEs. Since then, the company has been manufacturing components to Rane TRW and Royal Enfield. ‘We follow conventional technology like stamping, deep draw in which we have gathered knowledge through our experience over the past 14 years,’ Mehta added.

The company recently bagged orders for seat frames from Haritha Seating Systems. It has already been supplying air, oil and fuel fi lters to Royal Enfield, air fi lter assemblies to Greaves Cotton, and power steering fi lters and reservoir components to

Photo: Akmal Rahman B

Inca Radiant Engineering to make PU filters

Products of Inca Radiant Engineering

Rane TRW. It has plans to setup research and development facility in a year’s time, which will focus mainly on techniques and methods to reduce the production cost.

The share of business for IRE from aftermarket is about fi ve percent. ‘We supply fi lters in the aftermarket, which is done on cash and carry basis to the dealers. Aftermarket has great-

er profit and greater risk,’ Mehta said. The modern production facilities and dedicated approach of IRE has made it to supply the wide range in the markets across India and Gulf countries.

Nissan’s manager programme begins Our Bureau Mumbai

N

issan Motor India (NMIPL) recently kicked-off its ‘Nissan Student Brand Manager’ (NSBM) Programme 2011. The Japanese car maker is anticipating participation from 150 colleges spanning across 15 cities in India for second edition of the initiative. The company aims to target 1,200 entries for appointing 20 NSBM’s. The tenure of the programme will be for a period of a six months starting from July to December, 2011.

After undergoing training, the students will work closely with company officials on a variety of initiatives.

Some of the short-listed colleges for selecting students include KJ Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, SPJain MIR Mumbai, IIFT Delhi, University Business School Chandigarh, IIM Kolkata, IIM Ahmedabad, Loyola Institute of Business Administration Chennai, Department of Business Studies and Christ University Bangalore. The jury members for the second edition consists of eminent personalities from the advertising and the automobile fields such as Ad Guru, Genesis Films, Prahlad Kakkar; CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults, Harish Bijoor; and Editor, Autocar India Magazine, Hormazd Sorabjee.

Dinesh Jain, CEO, Hover India, Parul Shrivastava, Nissan Brand Manager & Suresh Ghai, DG, KJ Somaiya

The students who meet the eligibility criteria including completion of fi rst year can participate in this innovative programme by undertaking a small project outlined by the company.

Around 20-25 entries are likely to be shortlisted from every region for the zonal rounds in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai to face the Jury for further selection.

During their tenure, each student brand manager will get `30,000 as stipend and `20,000 as marketing budget to implement their initiatives for the full programme.

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CORPORATE

Ferrari, Puma form licensing partnership

Toyota, Denso transition production engineering to Mathworks

F

M

errari and Puma recently extended their licensing partnership keeping Puma, a sport-lifestyle brand as the official licensing partner for Ferrari branded products and the official supplier of team and race wear for Scuderia Ferrari. Through this extended partnership, Puma will continue to develop Ferrari licensed footwear, apparel and accessories for global sales and distribution. Puma is the sportlifestyle brand in motorsport, and its development of fi re retardant technology has revolutionised driver racewear by dramatically reducing weight while maintaining the optimal performance of safety and comfort. Puma will continue to supply Scuderia Ferrari with the latest technological innovations in team and

Jochen Zeitz, Chairman and CEO of PUMA (R) with Luca di Montezemolo, Chairman of Ferrari

racewear, enabling Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa to compete for the coveted Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships in one of the lightest and safest race suits in Formula One.

athWorks announced that Toyota and Denso Corporation, Toyota’s primary automotive electronics supplier, have chosen to transition their automotive massproduction programmes to the MathWorks R2010b release.

The transition builds on the shared commitment of Toyota and Denso to model-based designs, which incorporates technology for automatic embedded code generation. Both companies use MathWorks modelling, simulation, and code-generation products in their production software development programmes for mass-production software.

Adopting R2010b enables Toyota and Denso engineers to apply Model-Based Design in current and future production vehicle

programmes and to use automatically generated, fi xed-point production C code for complex, real-time embedded systems.

‘The joint development efforts with MathWorks that began in 2003 have matured significantly over the last eight years,’ said General Manager, Automotive Software Engineering Division, Toyota.Shigeru Kuroyanagi.

‘MathWorks continues to make advancements towards our Quality-Cost-Delivery (QCD) initiative requirements. By using R2010b as a third-generation toolset, we can apply R2010b’s enhanced code-generation efficiency for fi xed-point ECUs to deliver cost reduction for massproduction. We also expect a significant reduction in development costs through the increased

Offers 4 weeks comprehensive course Batch 3 04 - 29 July 2011, Bangalore

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use of automatic code generation for fi xed-point ECUs.’ Over the last three years, MathWorks has worked closely with Toyota and Denso to provide the advanced capabilities required in Simulink, Stateflow, and Embedded Coder for powertrain production programmes.

Additionally, Denso developed comprehensive modelling guidelines, supplemental tools, and materials to prepare Toyota and Denso engineers for moving their production work from R2006b to R2010b.

‘Toyota and Denso’s comm it ment to Model-Based Design shows how MathWorks software continues to be used by the automotive industr y around the world for product design and development,’ said Vice President of Engineering for Design Automation at MathWorks, Andy Grace.

Toyota & Denso’s commitment proves that MathWorks software is used by the automotive industry around the world

Strengthens modelling capabilities with SimDriveline MathWorks has recently announced a new version of SimDriveline that helps simplify the integration of other physical domains into drivetrain models, including thermal losses in geartrains, electrical solenoids, and hydraulically actuated clutches. SimDriveline, based on MathWorks Simscape technology, helps engineers model and simulate mechanical systems in Simulink for a variety of automotive, aerospace, defence, and industrial applications.

With SimDriveline software, teams can model simple and complex systems in one environment more easily than with signal-based or input/outputbased methods. Enhancements to SimDriveline include gear loss models that capture meshing and viscous losses for efficiency studies, and more accurate and efficient simulation for systems involving multiple, simultaneous clutch events.

The software is based on Simscape technology, so that teams can connect directly to other physical modelling libraries and leverage other simulation capabilities, such as data logging and Simscape local solvers. Using these libraries and capabilities helps engineers spend more time refi ning their designs and less time setting up models and tests.

‘It is critical for engineers working toward an optimised design to model their software algorithms and physical system together in a single environment and to detect integration issues as early as possible,’ said Marketing Director of Design Automation, MathWorks, Paul Barnard. ‘MathWorks physical modelling tools help support engineers through every stage of Model-Based Design, bringing accuracy and efficiency to the workflow.’

16 - 30 June 2011

Auto Monitor

STUDY

Breathe easy: air quality management I

ndia’s air quality monitoring network, originally called the National Ambient Air Quality Monitoring (NAAQM) was initiated in 1984 with seven stations in Agra and Ampara. The network was established by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in coordination with the SPCBs under the Air (Pollution and Control) of Pollution Act, 1981 to collect, compile and disseminate information on air quality.

CPCB has expanded the programme and is now executing the nation-wide renamed National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP). NAMP determines status and trends of ambient air quality to see if compliant the NAAQS. The NAAQS have been notified for seven parameters: Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM), PM10, NO2, SO2, CO, Ammonia (NH3) and Pb. Additional parameters, such as Hydrogen sulfide (H2S ) and Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds (PAHs), are also being monitored in selected sites. Pollutants are monitored every 24 hours (ie four-hourly sampling for gaseous pollutants and eight-hourly sampling for particulate matter) with a frequency of twice a week, to have at least 104 observations in a year for all stations.

The NAAQS helps to identify non-attainment cities in order to develop the necessary preventive and corrective measures by taking into account the geographical and climate conditions in order to better understand the natural cleansing process of generated pollutants. As of 2009, the NAMP consists of 342 operational stations monitoring in 128 cities/ towns in 28 States and four Union Territories (UTs).

Air Quality Forecasting

The two forecasting efforts were conducted for the games are

by CPCB and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM).

IITM under MOES established System of Air Quality forecasting and Research (SAFAR) as the official forecasting effort for CWG 2010 Delhi. SAFAR provided nearly real time air quality information for ozone, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, PM2.5, PM10, benzene, toluene, xylene, and black carbon and weather forecast prior 24 hours.

Eleven air quality monitoring stations, 34 automatic weather stations in NCR along with GPS sonde observations, and Doppler Weather radar have been installed.

The CPCB forecasting effort is based on a modelling exercise which combines atmospheric physics of weather forecasting and atmospheric chemistry among pollutants. Most common sources observed are vehicle exhaust and road dust, industrial emissions, residential fuel use, generator sets and garbage burning. Forecasting data was augmented with information on surveyed sources of air pollution. This includes information from the existing monitoring network operated by CPCB and laser-based Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) network deployed in the region to establish horizontal and vertical profi les of aerosols.

Air Quality Reporting Air quality data generated at the monitoring stations are transmitted to CPCB where these are checked, scrutinised, compiled, processed and analyzed for information on the annual

mean, standard deviation etc. of the pollutants.

Dust is being monitored as hourly average and the data is directly transferred to the website. For manual monitoring stations, the monitoring is every fourth working day at each station.

Revised National Ambient Air Quality Standards of India vs. WHO AQG Pollutant ( g/m3)

SO2

NO2 PM10

Impacts of Air Pollution & Climate Change Impacts of air pollution and climate change on health, economy, and environment can result in major damages in both the national and local levels. Cities are most affected by the impacts of air pollution. Over 900 million urban people are affected with diseases and irritations linked with high levels of indoor and ambient harmful emissions. In Mumbai, the prevalence of both symptoms and signs of such diseases is around 22.2 percent.

Among the six major communicable diseases, maximum cases (25,807,722) were reported for Acute Respiratory Infection while maximum number of people (7,073) died due to Pulmonary Tuberculosis in India, during the year 2006.

Aside from health-related concerns, Acid rain is a major problem in India where the use of sulphur-containing coal and oil—the primary sources of acidic emissions—is very high. The effects are already being felt in agriculture with yield reduction.

Aside from agriculture, damaged buildings and materials hurt tourism as well. Several important temples and palaces in India have deteriorated because of air pollution especially due to acidic particulate matter. Aside from effects on India alone, air pollution is a trans-boundary concern.

61

PM2.5 O3 Pb CO Ammonia Benzene Benzo(a)pyrene, particulate phase only, (ng/m3) Arsenic (ng/m3) Nickel (ng/m3)

Time weighted average Annual* 24-Hr** 1-Hr Annual* 24-Hr** Annual* 24-Hr** Annual* 24-Hr** 8-Hr** 1-Hr* Annual* 24-Hr** 8-Hr** 1-Hr** Annual* 24-Hr** Annual* Annual*

Concentration in Ambient Air ( g/m3) Ecologically Sensitive Area (notified by Central Government) 50* 20* 80** 80** 40* 30* 80** 80** 60* 60* 100** 100** 40* 40* 60** 60** 100** 100** 180* 180* 0.5* 0.5* 1** 1** 2,000** 2,000** 4,000** 4,000** 100* 100* 400** 400** 5* 5*

Industrial, Residential, Rural and Other Area

1*

WHO AQG ( g/m3) 20a 200a 40a 20a 50a 10a 25a 100a 0.5b 10,000b 30,000b

-c

1*

-c

Annual*

6*

6*

-c

Annual*

20*

20*

-c

An atmospheric phenomenon, known as Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) or South Asia haze is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory diseases.

Stationary Sources

is accomplished through the (i) establishment and enforcement of emission norms, (ii) use of planning and evaluation tools, (iii) application of zoning management, (iv) use of cleaner fuels, (v) energy efficient and conservative reforms and (v) use of renewable energy.

Air pollution levels in India have been showing a decreasing trend. Despite this, PM10 (RSPM) levels are still non-compliant with annual NAAQS and WHO AQG. SO2 levels are compliant with the annual NAAQS while NO2 levels are mostly compliant NAAQS and WHO AQG. There is not enough data to assess a trend for PM2.5 and O3. For GHG, levels remain high especially CO2.

Stationary sources of pollution are primarily from industries and power generation. India’s control of stationary sources of emissions

(Extracts from CAMP India 2010 Edition: Clean Air Management Profile)

Mobile Sources India’s control of vehicular emissions is primarily accomplished through (i) establishment and enforcement of emission norms, (ii) inspection and maintenance systems (IMS), (iii) application of traffic and congestion management (iv) accessible and comprehensive public transport, (v) use of cleaner fuels, and (vi) use of awareness programs.

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French government confers highest AIA announces awards civilian award to Rahul Bajaj for innovation

T

he President of French Republic has appointed Chairman of Bajaj Auto, Rahul Bajaj, as Knight in the Order of the Legion of Honour.

On behalf of the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, HE, the French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont conferred the ‘Chevalier de l’ Ordre de la Legion de’ Honneur’ on Rahul Bajaj at a ceremony held at his residence in New Delhi. The French President bestowed the honour in recognition of Bajaj’s remarkable career as businessman, his successful management of the Bajaj Group and his notable entrepreneurial spirit.

The French Republic confers several distinctions amongst which the Order of the Legion of Honour is the highest distinction that can be conferred on a French citizen as well as on a for-

MBA from Harvard Business School hails from an illustrious family that has made rich contributions to nation building and has been associated with the Indian freedom struggle. Late Shri Jamnalal Bajaj, Grandfather of Rahul Bajaj was considered the fi fth son of Rahul Bajaj & Mr. Jerome Bonnafont Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation. eigner. The Order of the Legion In recognition of his personal of Honour was instituted in 1802 qualities, President of India awardby Napoleon Bonaparte. ed Bajaj the ‘Padma Bhushan’ in On accepting the honour, 2001. Bajaj was elected to the Rajya Rahul Bajaj said, It is indeed a Sabha in 2006. The Bajaj Group great honour to receive this rectoday is India’s leading industrial ognition. It is a great honour house with a market cap of about for the members of the Bajaj `78,000 crore and functions with Group and a tribute to the spirit deep social commitment and pracof entrepreneurship.’ tices the highest norms of good Bajaj, an Honours Graduate corporate governance. in Economics and Law with an

A

utomat ion Indust r y A s s o c i a t ion (A I A) announced the ‘Excellence Awards for Innovation and Creative Automation’ within the automotive factory. The awards are focused towards celebrating the pioneering role played by midlevel operational management teams. The best applications of ‘Innovation and Creative deployment of Automation’ were presented on day 2 (June 11, 2011) of the Automotive Engineering Show, that was organised by Focussed Events, Chennai Trade Centre from 10-12 June, 2011.

The Automotive Engineering Show highlights various technologies for ‘Manufacturing and Operational Excellence’ in the automotive sector, including advanced industrial automation technologies.

The Automotive Plant

Managers and Technologists presented their successful journey towards operational excellence sharing case experiences in quality, safety, productivity, energy efficiency, environment protection and cost control and illustrate with examples how they created new benchmarks or overcame some specific challenge, by innovative and creative use of automation technology.

‘In today’s competitive market, the company that stands out is the one which has been able to use technology in a creative and innovative way. This event is an effort to recognise how Indian talent have adapted their knowledge of industrial automation and created excellence through innovation in their manufacturing plants”. said Director, AIA, Anup Wadhwa, while announcing the composition of jury members for these awards.

Jur y Members included Chief Executive Officer, Ashok Leyland Nissan Vehicles, VK Bhalla; President AIA, Vijay Paranjape; Deput y Director, Dept of Industries & Commerce, Govt. of Tamil Nadu, Dr Ethirajan Bhaskaran; Vice President, Powertrain Operations, Ford India, Balasundaram R; Head Of Dept, Engineering Design (IIT Madras), Prof Nilesh J Vasa; Chief Executive Officer, Mahindra Vehicle, Chakan Plant, Vijay Dhongade and Sr VP, Director, Renault Nissan Technology & Business Centre India, Jacques Foulquier.

GoAir ranked Best Performing Airline

G

oAir, India’s smart lowfare domestic airline has been ranked by Airbus as the ‘Best Performing Airline’ in the Airbus A320 category operator in Asia Pacific / Middle East/ Africa. The award is presented every two years by Airbus based on both fleet utilisation and performance achievements in each region and worldwide and for two categories of fleet size. Their metrics take into account On-time performance as well as severity of the operational interruptions (based on the Airbus Severity Index calculation).

Along with the Best Performing Airline recognition, GoAir has also been registered with IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) programme. The IOSA programme is an internationally recognised and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline.

Expressing his gratitude on receiving this recognition, GoAir spokesperson said, ‘We at GoAir feel absolutely delighted to receive this recognition and strongly believe that this award is recognition of the consistent effort and commitment by all our GoAir employees in particular our engineering, operations & ma intena nce team, the Ground Support and the Airport service team.’

16 - 30 June 2011

GLOBAL WATCH

International auto round-up AMERICA

Mazda to stop making cars in United States Mazda will pull out of its manufacturing venture with Ford and stop making cars in Michigan, a Japanese newspaper reported. Mazda and Ford operate the AutoAlliance International plant as a 50-50 partnership. But the plant was running at less than half of its capacity last year, as its 1,700 workers produced 36,000 just Mazda 6 cars and 78,000 Ford Mustangs on a single shift. Citing unidentified company sources, the Nikkei business daily said Mazda was considering selling its stake to Ford as part of a restructuring of its global production operations. Mazda would ship cars to the United States from Japan and from Mexico starting around 2013, according to the Nikkei. This year, Mazda has sold 103,072 vehicles in the United States, up 5.7 percent. But sales of Mazda 6 cars, battling in the cutthroat mid-size sedan segment, are down 8.9 percent at 13,604.

Chrysler rolls out SRT brand Chrysler Group LLC is creating a new brand—the Street and Racing Technology or SRT—and reshuff ling its management.

Ralph Gilles will lead the new cross-brand performance unit and Chrysler Motorsports activities. Gilles, formerly president and CEO of Dodge, will maintain design responsibility for all Dodge, Ram, Chrysler and Jeep vehicles. SRT was previously an in-house engineering group. The brand will build low-volume, high-performance vehicles for Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep. The Auburn Hills automaker will grow the SRT line from one model now, based on the Dodge Challenger, to four this fall by adding SRT versions of the Dodge Charger, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Chrysler 300C.

Ford invests $100m in robot technology Ford is investing $100 million in robotic laser technology to better attach doors and other large panels to vehicles, beginning with the 2012 Ford Focus and Explorer SUV, during assembly, according to a report in the Detroit News. The advanced robots can measure the opening on the car to guide the door perfectly into place. The laser-guided

technology ensures a better fit with less room for human judgment or error. Further down the assembly line, robots with laser beams measure all gaps to evaluate the fit. The robots can stop the assembly line if the camera detects a door or hood does not meet strict quality guidelines.

The advanced robots will be fi rst used at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne and the Saarlouis, Germany, facilities, both of which make the Focus, and the Explorer plant in Chicago. Over

the next several years, 17 plants around the world will add the technology.

Fiat reaches deal to buy Treasury’s Chrysler stake for $560m Fiat SpA agreed to acquire the US Treasury’s stake in Chrysler Group for $560 million, ending the Obama administration’s involvement with the Auburn Hills automaker. Fiat agreed to pay $500 million for the US government’s six percent equity stake in Chrysler. It is also paying $75 million for an option the Treasury held to acquire the rest of the company. Of that, $15 million will go to the Canadian government, which will hold

a small equity stake. The deal means tax payers will see a $1.3 billion loss on the bailout.

Chrysler received $12.5 billion in total, including $8.5 billion advanced by the Obama administration. The government had previously recovered about $10.6 billion. The government’s exit ends restrictions Chrysler faced: The Treasury Department will no longer have to approve of pay packages for senior executives.

Chrysler minivan to get AWD The next-generation Chrysler minivan and a companion crossover will have all-wheel drive, according to a report in the Detroit News. Chrysler

offered all-wheel drive until 2004, when it was discontinued to make way for Stow ‘n Go seats that fold into the f loor. New minivans are due in 2014, but Marchionne is speeding up the timetable. The next generation could be timed to coincide with the end of its agreement to make the Volkswagen Routan through the 2013 model year. The family could include a compact pickup in mid-2012. Designers are working on two sketches for a ‘lifestyle truck’ based on two different families of vehicles. The replacement for the Jeep Compass and Patriot will be made at Fiat SpA’s Mirafiori plant in Italy. They are now made in Belvidere.

Auto Monitor

63

ASIA Toyota recalls over 39,000 Prius, iQ cars globally Toyota will recall 139,420 Prius and iQ cars globally for defects in electric power-steering and brakes. The automaker will fi x power-steering problems in 105,784 Prius gasoline-electric hybrids and brakes in 33,636 iQ compact cars. Toyota will recall 47,784 Prius vehicles in Japan and 58,000 overseas, of which 52,000 will be in the US. The company will also fi x 21,636 iQ cars in Japan and 12,000 overseas, mainly in the UK. The Prius cars to be recalled were produced between October 1997 and May 2003, while the iQs were made between September 2008 and May 2010, the carmaker said.

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GLOBAL WATCH

International auto round-up EUROPE

Audi Q3 production starts in Spain, market launch in fourth quarter Production for the new Audi

Q3 has begun at SEAT’s factory in Martorell, Spain. The small SUV, which will do battle with BMW’s X1, had its world debut at the recent Shanghai show.

Market launch is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year.

Around 100,000 Q3s are slated to roll off the three-shift assem-

bly line annually. Audi and SEAT together have invested around Euro 330 million in infrastructure and facilities at the 18-year-old plant. A new body shop featuring 450 robots was specially set up for the Q3 on a 3,22,917 sq ft site.

It features the ‘roof bell,’ an innovative development from the Audi Toolmaking Shop in Ingolstadt, Germany. A robot grabs the roof and aligns it precisely while a second robot has the roof bell ready for the following roof of the next body. By building the Q3 at Marotell, Audi will provide about 1,500 jobs at the plant, including 700 newly created positions. In a future second phase, Audi plans to build the Q3 in China for local consumption.

Aston Martin to shift Rapide production to UK

GM revives Saab 18 months after its death

Aston Martin will transfer production of its Rapide four-door

GM is giving former unit Saab Automobile a lease on life 18 months after almost killing off the Swedish brand. GM, which had planned to shut down Saab before reaching a last-minute deal to sell it to Spyker Cars NV in February 2010, is now producing Saab’s new 9-4X crossover. For 10 days last month, GM was the only manufacturer of Saab vehicles after a cash crunch forced Saab to shut its plant in Trollhaettan, Sweden. The 9-4X, the first Saab model to combine sport-utility vehicle proportions with car handling, will provide a crucial boost to revenue as the company battles for survival.

model to the UK from Magna Steyr in Austria. The Rapide production will move to the company’s headquarters in Gaydon in the second half of 2012, the company said.

Aston Martin contracted Magna Steyr to build the Rapide in 2008 because it didn’t have sufficient capacity at Gaydon. Production started late 2009.

Saab’s production restart was funded by a short-term loan from shareholder Gemini Investment Fund and a partnership with Chinese car dealer Pangda Automobile Trade, arranged four days after a deal with Hawtai Motor Group collapsed. Saab’s global sales peaked in 2006 at 133,000 cars. But it sold just 31,700 vehicles last year, down 21 percent from 2009 and missing an original target of 50,000 to 60,000.

Nissan to invest Euro 215 million in UK Nissan is likely to invest Pounds 192 million (Euro 215 million) in Britain on the next version of its compact Qashqai crossover model, according to a Reuters report. The new Qashqai will be developed at a design centre in London and a technical centre in southern England and will be built at Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, northeast England.

Besides the current Qashqai, Nissan builds the small minivan Note and compact crossover Juke cars at its Sunderland plant, 80 percent of whose output is exported. It is already investing Pound 420 million in Sunderland for the production of the Leaf EV from 2013 and a standalone facility to produce lithium-ion batteries for itself and partner Renault SA, from 2012.

Volkswagen to boost Russian production Volkswagen plans to boost production in Russia in the medium term to tap into growth outside its home market and take advantage of incentives. Moscow expects foreign automakers to invest $7 billion in Russia as a result of customs duty breaks granted to companies planning to make at least 300,000 cars there a year by 2015, up from 25,000. Earlier this year, the German carmaker struck a deal to produce more than 100,000 Volkswagen and Skoda cars a year at Russian group GAZ’s plant as the German carmaker increases its presence in the fastgrowing Russian market. Russian car sales are expected to rise 23 percent to 2.35 million vehicles this year, and foreign carmakers such as Volkswagen and Renault hope to tap into that growth.

Japan’s Nikkei business daily cited the Russian government as saying Nissan and its partner Renault are planning to invest as much as $2 billion in Russia by 2015. Italy’s Fiat SpA is also close to investing $1.1 billion to build 120,000 cars a year in Russia.

ASIA

Ford, GM see mixed China sales performance in May Foreign automakers are seeing mixed sales trends in China as the world’s biggest market for new vehicles cools after years of torrid growth, according to the Associated Press. GM said that its total sales in China fell three percent in May from a year earlier to 190,674 vehicles, though its sales in the fi rst fi ve months of the year edged up nearly fi ve percent to 1.08 million. Ford Motors saw its sales in China climb 14 percent from a year earlier to 45,162 vehicles in May, while Honda reported its sales fell about 32 percent to 27,204 vehicles.

16 - 30 June 2011

GLOBAL CORPORATE WATCH

Auto Monitor

67

Volvo Trucks first to market gas-powered truck

V

olvo Trucks is enhancing its focus on alternative fuels with the launch of the new Volvo FM MethaneDiesel.

This truck is powered by up to 75 percent gas. Thanks to its fuelefficient technolog y—which extends the vehicle’s operating range—it can considerably reduce CO2 emissions from heavy and long-distance transport operations.

‘The sales start of our methane-diesel model creates new conditions for the gas truck market. By using liquefied gas in an efficient diesel engine, we make it possible to use gas-powered trucks in heavier and longerdistance transport operations, making us the fi rst manufacturer in Europe to do so,’ said President Europe Division, Volvo Trucks Claes Nilsson.

The fact that the company is developing gas technology and making it more attractive for the transport sector creates future potential for significantly reducing the collective environmental impact of heavy transports. This technology with natural gas generates 10 percent lower CO2 emissions than a diesel engine does. In the long term, Volvo Trucks regards the increased use of natural gas as a major step towards greater availability and use of biogas, which reduces CO2 emissions still further.

‘We are convinced that liquefied gas is one of the most important future alternatives to today’s vehicle fuels,’ stated Director Environmental Affairs, Volvo Trucks, Lars Mårtensson.

Better Technology Compared with conventional gas-powered spark-plug engines, Volvo’s gas technology offers 30 to 40 percent higher efficiency, and this in turn cuts fuel consumption by 25 percent. This means that if a Volvo gas-powered truck is run on biogas, emissions of carbon dioxide would be able to be cut by up to 70 percent compared with a conventional diesel engine.

Since the price of natural gas is often significantly lower than that of diesel, fi nancial savings are also possible; this is often a necessary precondition for widespread acceptance of new technology.

‘Natural gas is attracting considerable interest in many countries and regions the world over. This interest is being largely driven by environmental considerations as well as by concerns over the secure supply of energy. In the USA and parts of Asia, Europe and South America, gas power is either already in use or decisions have been taken to invest in this power source. Thailand, for instance, is well to the fore with an established infrastructure and good availability,’ explained Lars Mårtensson.

The Volvo FM MethaneDiesel will initially be sold in Europe, where the gas infrastructure is best established. At present there are plans to build about 100 trucks in 2011. Series production will get under way in August.

Other parts of the world will follow, as well as sales on additional European markets.

‘If things go as planned, we expect sales to take off in sixeight European countries within the next two years, with about 400 Volvo FM MethaneDiesel trucks sold a year. Future sales

will naturally depend largely on expansion of liquefied gas fi lling stations for commercial vehicles,’ said Claes Nilsson.

Volvo FM MethaneDiesel The Volvo FM MethaneDiesel is powered by up to 75 percent natural gas or biogas—both of which consist of methane gas. The engine technology is based on a conventional diesel engine equipped with gas injectors, a special Thermoslike fuel tank that keeps the gas liquefied and chilled to -140 degrees celsius, and a specially modified catalytic converter. By using liquefied gas, more fuel can be stored in the tanks compared to if the fuel is compressed. This gives the methane-diesel truck a far greater range than that of traditional gas-powered trucks that utilise spark-plug technology. In a truck with a gross weight of 40

(L) Claes Nilsson, President, Europe Division, Volvo Trucks (R) The Volvo FM MethaneDiesel truck

tonnes, the fuel tank holds enough gas for a range of up to 500 km in normal driving.

The new Volvo FM MethaneDiesel is offered with a 13-litre engine producing 460 horsepower and 2300 NM of torque. The fuel consists of up to

75 percent liquefied gas and the rest diesel, but the proportions can vary depending on how the vehicle is used.

Volvo Trucks’ field tests show that methane-diesel technology offers the same operating reliability as a conventional diesel

engine. Driveability is similar to the one of a conventional diesel truck. If the gas tank runs dry, the system automatically switches over to diesel and the driver is alerted via a control lamp that comes on in the instrument panel.

68

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

EUROPEAN SALES

New Vehicle Registration in Europe -by Manufacturer GROUP

BRAND

AMV-Motor Vehicles (LV+CV) Aston Martin Aston Martin BMW BMW Mini Other Total China Brilliance Changan Great Wall Landwind Lifan Other Total Chrysler Chrysler Dodge Jeep Total DAF DAF Mercedes Daimler Smart Other Total Fiat Alfa Romeo Fiat Iveco Lancia Other Total Ford Ford Mercury Other Total GM Chevrolet Opel Other Total Jaguar Land Rover Jaguar Land Rover Total Japan Daihatsu Honda Mazda Mitsubishi Nissan Subaru Suzuki Other Total Korea Daewoo Hyundai KIA Other Total MAN MAN Other Total MG Rover Rover Porsche Porsche PSA Citroen Peugeot Total Renault Dacia Renault Other Total Scania Scania Toyota Toyota Lexus Total Volkswagen AG Audi Seat Skoda Volkswagen Other Total Volvo Trucks Volvo SAAB Other Volvo Other Total Total PC- Passenger Cars Aston Martin Aston Martin BMW BMW Mini Other Total China Brilliance Changan Great Wall Landwind Lifan Other Total Chrysler Chrysler Dodge Jeep Total DAF DAF Mercedes Daimler Smart Other Total Fiat Alfa Romeo Fiat Iveco Lancia Other Total Ford Ford Mercury Other Total GM Chevrolet

2011 MARCH 350 70158 20289 76 90523

2010 MARCH

YEAR TILL DATE 2011

-3.85 3.62 22.02 43.40 7.27

1 4 410 743 309 1902 2954 3825 82511 8644 184 91339 16289 101578 8578 9978 509 136932 168289 0 1 168290 19458 136352 66 155876 3892 14854 18746 1496 25630 21573 17763 67916 5178 22123 2310 163989

1 194560 20867 135037 222 156126 4084 15217 19301 2564 29867 30159 13310 49548 5440 24669 1685 157242

0.00 -13.50 -6.75 0.97 -70.27 -0.16 -4.70 -2.39 -2.88 -41.65 -14.19 -28.47 33.46 37.07 -4.82 -10.32 37.09 4.29

612 158313 38258 154 196725 0 1 876 0 5 5 887 1987 1197 4891 8075 9866 190090 20662 460 211212 39987 247727 21935 25817 1206 336672 356037 1 3 356041 44932 295474 267 340673 6431 25781 32212 3553 49332 45225 40734 146086 12384 52979 5165 355458

44289 29946 596 74831 5302 31 5333

46919 32919 905 80743 3077 53 3130

-5.61 -9.03 -34.14 -7.32 72.31 -41.51 70.38

102477 68863 1785 173125 12645 83 12728

3858 114053 128677 242730 27563 143330 8 170901 3379 73717 3800 77517 78284 36739 54163 197714 243 367143 3904 3730 29046 5674 38450 1821280

3555 117290 139282 256572 32557 160039 0 192596 2237 73903 2649 76552 72767 36140 52628 190725 272 352532 2279 2080 26912 5776 34768 1885494

8.52 -2.76 -7.61 -5.39 -15.34 -10.44

9380 273282 312145 585427 69209 373860 12 443081 8653 174672 6196 180868 172944 81482 128694 476648 433 860201 10342 7252 68544 12867 88663 4220901

350 70128 20287 76 90491

1 4 285 611 281 1813 2705

364 67638 16623 53 84314 0 3 14 0 4 3 24 1319 1721 2072 5112

62523 8643 71166 16268 79722 71 9976 509 106546 143705 0 1 143706 19428

0 405

0 280

364 67707 16627 53 84387 0 3 243 0 4 3 253 1384 1810 2184 5378 3218 81630 9697 181 91508 9827 135933 8741 13100 592 168193 194559

Source: Association Auxiliaire de l’Automobile

% CHANGE

-100.00 66.67 -75.00 33.33 62.06 -46.32 -82.93 -12.91 -45.07 18.86 1.08 -10.86 1.66 -0.18 65.76 -25.27 -1.86 -23.83 -14.02 -18.59 -13.50

-11.26 51.05 -0.25 43.45 1.26 7.58 1.66 2.92 3.66 -10.66 4.14 71.30 79.33 7.93 -1.77 10.59 -3.41

-3.85 3.68 22.04 43.40 7.33

-75.00 33.33 1087.50 -53.68 -83.67 -12.50 -47.09

612 158163 38254 154 196571 0 1 417 0 5 5 428 1669 982 4687 7338

62379 9697

0.23 -10.87

140492 20661

72076 9801 110381 141 13095 592 134010 172775 1

-1.26 65.98 -27.78 -49.65 -23.82 -14.02 -20.49 -16.83 -100.00

172776 20830

-16.83 -6.73

161153 39927 196967 167 25810 1206 264077 305316 1 3 305320 44839

-100.00 1900.00

GROUP

Jaguar Land Rover

Japan

Korea

MAN MG Rover Porsche PSA

Renault

Scania Toyota

Volkswagen AG

Other

Total

BRAND 2011 MARCH Opel 125261 Other 62 Total 144751 Jaguar 3889 12869 Land Rover Total 16758 Daihatsu 1491 25626 Honda Mazda 21335 Mitsubishi 14318 Nissan 60299 Subaru 5164 Suzuki 22043 Other 491 Total 150767 Daewoo 43881 Hyundai KIA 29865 Other 556 Total 74302 MAN Rover Porsche 3838 Citroen 94456 Peugeot 109516 Total 203972 Dacia 26195 115425 Renault Total 141620 Scania Toyota 69295 Lexus 3799 Total 73094 Audi 78140 36602 Seat Skoda 53792 Volkswagen 178055 Other 243 Total 346832 SAAB 3730 28980 Volvo Other 2694 Total 35404 1606587

% CHANGE 0.05 -70.89 -1.02 -4.77 -8.47 -7.64 -41.85 -14.19 -28.74 39.38 35.92 -4.93 -10.27 212.74 2.45

YEAR TILL DATE 2011 270558 236 315633 6427 22092 28519 3533 49319 44475 33562 130098 12348 52729 1024 327088

46463 32813 858 80134

-5.56 -8.98 -35.20 -7.28

101350 68597 1635 171582

3555 98571 120906 219477 31010 134184 165194

7.96 -4.17 -9.42 -7.06 -15.53 -13.98 -14.27

9265 224979 266167 491146 65347 299051 364398

69889 2649 72538 72637 35909 52132 172427 272 333377 2080 26868 3554 32502 1686999

-0.85 43.41 0.77 7.58 1.93 3.18 3.26 -10.66 4.04 79.33 7.86 -24.20 8.93 -4.77

163365 6193 169558 172533 81067 127845 427479 433 809357 7252 68367 5825 81444 3703489

73

-56.16

154

229 65 88 112 265

-45.41 103.08 -68.18 -20.54 -6.04

459 317 212 204 733

12698 26 25099 5062 5 30192 21040

1.24 -19.23 -15.17 -4.09 -60.00 -13.32 14.39

31401 60 49598 11988 7 61653 49687

31 9819

-6.45 12.57

49687 89 24872 30

7 9857

-100.00 12.47

1157 0 5 219 2793 5100 8 102 1358 9585

-100.00

455 106 47 608 0 18704 18336 37040 1547 23809 25356 3966 130 229 494 17956 18809 0 44 824 868 171743

-10.33 -23.58 -14.89 -12.99

141 40 3 43 121 25

1

LCV-Light Commercial Vehicles up to 3.5t ** BMW 32 BMW Mini Total China Great Wall 125 Chrysler 132 Chrysler Dodge 28 JEEP 89 Total 249 DAF DAF Mercedes 12856 Daimler Fiat Alfa Romeo 21 Fiat 21291 Iveco 4855 Lancia 2 Total 26169 Ford Ford 24067 Other Total 24067 GM Chevrolet 29 11053 Opel SAAB 4 Other Total 11086 Jaguar Land Rover Jaguar 1988 Land Rover Japan Daihatsu 5 Honda 4 Mazda 238 Mitsubishi 3142 Nissan 7547 Subaru 14 Suzuki 80 Other 1596 Total 12626 Korea Daewoo 408 Hyundai KIA 81 Other 40 Total 529 Porsche Porsche 20 PSA Citroen 19585 Peugeot 19095 Total 38680 Renault Dacia 1368 25017 Renault Total 26385 Toyota Toyota 4397 Audi 144 Volkswagen AG Seat 137 Skoda 367 Volkswagen 19392 Total 20040 Other SAAB Volvo 66 Other 1364 Total 1430 180679 Total LBC- Light Buses & Coaches upto 3.5 tn Mercedes Daimler Fiat Fiat Iveco Total Ford Ford GM Opel Chevrolet Total Japan Nissan Toyota

2010 MARCH 125201 213 146244 4084 14060 18144 2564 29862 29940 10273 44362 5432 24567 157 147157

-20.00 8.68 12.50 47.98 75.00 -21.57 17.53 31.73

24991 3693 20 13 750 6499 15770 36 250 3634 26972

4.71 4.14 4.43 -11.57 5.07 4.06 10.87 10.77 -40.17 -25.71 8.00 6.54

1123 266 150 1539 115 48266 45850 94116 3862 67284 71146 11250 411 415 838 48462 50126

50.00 65.53 64.75 5.20

177 3453 3630 431665

426 34 7 41 40 6

-66.90 17.65 -57.14 4.88 202.50 316.67

288 123 19 142 305 28

1

0.00

3

16 - 30 June 2011

GROUP Korea

PSA

Renault Volkswagen AG

Other

BRAND 2011 MARCH Total Hyundai Kia Other Total Citroen 1 Peugeot 2 Total 3 Renault 20 Audi Seat Skoda Volkswagen 93 Total Dodge 259 Other Total 706

Jaguar Land Rover Japan

Korea

Porsche PSA

Renault

Toyota Volkswagen AG

Other

Other Total Chevrolet Opel SAAB Other Total Jaguar Land Rover Daihatsu Honda Mazda Mitsubishi Nissan Subaru Suzuki Other Total Daewoo Hyundai KIA Other Total Porsche Citroen Peugeot Total Dacia Renault Total Toyota Audi Seat Skoda Volkswagen Total SAAB Volvo Other Total

Total

% CHANGE

YEAR TILL DATE 2011

-66.67 -33.33 -50.00 -81.82

8 7 15 55

320 1058

-19.06 -33.27

454 1524

73

-56.16

154

229 65 88 112 265

-45.41 103.08 -68.18 -20.54 -6.04

459 317 212 204 733

13124 26 25133 5069 5 30233 21080

-0.97 -19.23 -15.13 -4.16 -60.00 -13.30 14.74

31689 60 49721 12007 7 61795 49992

29 11078

31 9825

-6.45 12.75

89 24900

4 11111

7 9863

-42.86 12.65

30 25019

1988 5 4 238 3142 7548 14 80 1596 12627

1157 0 5 219 2793 5101 8 102 1358 9586

71.82 -20.00 8.68 12.50 47.97 75.00 -21.57 17.53 31.72

3693 20 13 750 6499 15773 36 250 3634 26975

408 81 40 529 20 19586 19097 38683 1368 25037 26405 4397 144 137 371 19481 20133

456 106 47 609 0 18707 18339 37046 1547 23919 25466 3971 130 231 496 18054 18911 0 44 1144 1188 172801

4.70 4.13 4.42 -11.57 4.67 3.69 10.73 10.77 -40.69 -25.20 7.90 6.46

1126 266 150 1542 115 48274 45857 94131 3862 67339 71201 11250 411 415 849 48682 50357

50.00 41.87 42.17 4.97

177 3907 4084 433189

1 3156 5406 389 2982 3371 90 6 1 2 9 244 82 167 493

-100.00 20.47 17.70 25.96 5.57 7.92 -4.44 -83.33 1100.00 -100.00 44.44 24.18 -15.85 31.14 19.88

4 9803 16229 883 8132 9015 191 3 15 1 19 673 215 499 1387

2864 11 34 45 1902 0 1902 2026 43 225 2007 623 22261

77.55 -18.18 58.82 40.00 49.42 49.84 61.55 -39.53 -32.00 83.11 8.83 36.09

12129 22 86 108 7407 12 7419 8301 60 428 9783 1539 76416

62 722 180 902

-62.90 -12.74 1.67 -9.87

63 1682 459 2141

23 630 183 813

Japan

MAN 231

66 1623 1689 181385

GROUP Fiat

Ford GM 3 3 6 110

-8.82

CV-Commercial Vehicles (trucks) over 3.5t ** China Other Chrysler Other 0 DAF DAF 3802 Daimler Mercedes 6363 Fiat Fiat 490 Iveco 3148 Total 3638 Ford Ford 86 Chevrolet 1 GM Opel 12 Other 0 Total 13 Japan Mitsubishi 303 69 Nissan Other 219 Total 591 Korea Daewoo MAN MAN 5085 PSA Citroen 9 Peugeot 54 Total 63 Renault Renault 2842 8 Other Total 2850 Scania Scania 3273 Toyota 26 Toyota Volkswagen AG Volkswagen 153 Volvo Trucks Volvo 3675 Other 678 Total 30296 BC-Buses & Coaches over 3.5t DAF DAF Daimler Mercedes Others Total

2010 MARCH

102

Total Light Commercial Vehicles up to 3.5t (LCV+LBC) BMW 32 BMW Mini Total China Great Wall 125 Chrysler 132 Chrysler Dodge 28 JEEP 89 Total 249 DAF DAF Mercedes 12997 Daimler Fiat Alfa Romeo 21 Fiat 21331 Iveco 4858 Lancia 2 Total 26212 Ford Ford 24188

GM

Auto Monitor

EUROPEAN SALES

PSA

-10.53 -23.58 -14.89 -13.14

Renault Scania Volkswagen Volvo Trucks Others Total

BRAND Fiat Iveco Total Ford Chevrolet Opel Nissan Mitsubishi Toyota Others Total MAN Others Total Citroen Peugeot Total Renault Scania Volkswagen Volvo

2011 MARCH 35 501 536 310 1

% CHANGE 16.67 -8.74 -7.43 -49.51

YEAR TILL DATE 2011 156 1629 1785 538 2

10

-100.00

4

6

-33.33

8

217 31 248 2 10 12 26 106 25 229 679 3012

212 53 265 1 3 4 34 211 19 272 455 3433

2.36 -41.51 -6.42 100.00 233.33 200.00 -23.53 -49.76 31.58 -15.81 49.23 -12.26

516 83 599 7 35 42 63 352 59 559 1596 7807

1 3218 6127 181 6308 419 3531 3950 704 6 11 2 19 244 85 170 499

-100.00 18.86 14.12 1.66 13.76 25.30 3.34 5.67 -43.75 -83.33 18.18 -100.00 -26.32 24.18 -18.82 31.18 19.24

4 9866 17910 460 18370 1039 9761 10800 729 4 16 1 21 673 215 507 1395

3076 53 3129 12 37 49 1936 0 1936 2237 43 244 2279 1078 25694

72.37 -41.51 70.44 -8.33 72.97 53.06 48.14 48.55 51.05 -39.53 -27.05 71.30 25.88 29.63

12645 83 12728 29 121 150 7470 12 7482 8653 60 487 10342 3135 84223

2648 3132 1296

24.51 27.23 9.41

8671 10322 3814

1 1969 1428 0 1428 2023 1827 240 14565

1800.00 84.36 60.57 60.85 61.10 90.59 -11.67 48.29

38 9007 6034 7 6041 8269 9329 562 56053

18 340 183 523 355 196 31 227

12 427 180 607 377 199 53 252

50.00 -20.37 1.67 -13.84 -5.84 -1.51 -41.51 -9.92

53 956 459 1415 1196 459 83 542

106 229 383 1842

211 272 296 2027

-49.76 -15.81 29.39 -9.13

352 559 947 5065

24.62 21.53 1.66 20.57 5.98

8724 11277 460 11737 5010

Total Commercial Vehicles (Trucks) & (Buses) over 3.5t Other China Chrysler Other 0 DAF DAF 3825 Daimler Mercedes 6992 Others 184 Total 7176 Fiat Fiat 525 3649 Iveco Total 4174 Ford Ford 396 Chevrolet 1 GM Opel 13 Others 0 Total 14 Japan Mitsubishi 303 69 Nissan Others 223 Total 595 Korea Daewoo Hyundai Total MAN MAN 5302 31 Others Total 5333 PSA Citroen 11 64 Peugeot Total 75 Renault Renault 2868 8 Others Total 2876 Scania Scania 3379 Toyota 26 Toyota Volkswagen AG Volkswagen 178 Volvo Trucks Volvo 3904 Others 1357 Total 33308 HCV-Heavy Commercial Vehicles (trucks) over 16t ** Other China DAF DAF 3297 Daimler Mercedes 3985 Fiat Iveco 1418 Ford Ford GM Chevrolet Japan Other 19 MAN MAN 3630 Renault Renault 2293 Other 4 Total 2297 Scania Scania 3259 Volvo 3482 Volvo Trucks Others 212 Total 21599 HBC-Heavy Buses & Coaches over 16t DAF DAF Daimler Mercedes Other Total Fiat Iveco MAN MAN Others Total Renault Renault Scania Scania Volvo Trucks Volvo Others Total

2010 MARCH 30 549 579 614

69

Total Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Trucks & Buses) over 16t Other China DAF DAF 3315 2660 Daimler Mercedes 4324 3558 Other 184 181 Total 4508 3739 Fiat Iveco 1773 1673 GM Chevrolet Japan Others 20 1 Total MAN MAN 3826 2168 31 53 Others Total 3857 2221 Renault Renault 2293 1428 4 0 Other Total 2297 1428 Scania Scania 3365 2234 Volvo 3711 2099 Volvo Trucks Others 595 536 Total 23441 16592

1900.00

39

76.48 -41.51 73.66 60.57

9466 83 9549 6034 7 6041 8621 9888 1509 61118

60.85 50.63 76.80 11.01 41.28

*EU 15 + EEFTA (Iceland, Norway & Switzerland) + Western Europe (10 new members) ‘(*) EU27 including Bulgaria and Romania; data for Malta and Cyprus not available

70

Auto Monitor

16 - 30 June 2011

N AMERICAN ASSEMBLY

AUTOFACTS Global Automotive Outlook PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

North America Assby Tracking 1-2011 (Tracking by Brand & Nameplate) April 2011 Ownership Org/

Last 3 Months YOY

Assembly

YOY

Share %

Share Chg

Year to Date YOY

Assembly

YOY

Volume

% Chg

Share %

Share Chg

Volume

YOY

Assembly

YOY

% Chg

Share %

Share Chg

Brand & Nameplate

Volume

% Chg

AutoAlliance International (USA)

7,553

-37.6%

0.8%

(-0.4)

28,455

-9.1%

0.9%

(-0.2)

34,071

-11.2%

0.8%

(-0.2)

Ford Mustang

5,890

-38.4%

0.6%

(-0.4)

18,892

-10.1%

0.6%

(-0.1)

21,497

-12.9%

0.5%

(-0.1)

Mazda Mazda6

1,663

-34.8%

0.2%

(-0.1)

9,563

-7.1%

0.3%

(-0.1)

12,574

-8.2%

0.3%

(-0.1)

BMW (Germany)

23,059

83.8%

2.4%

1.1

70,127

83.4%

2.1%

0.8

86,855

75.1%

2.0%

0.7

BMW X3

10,094

-

1.1%

1.1

30,098

-

0.9%

0.9

36,971

-

0.9%

0.9

BMW X5

9,168

5.3%

1.0%

0.1

28,303

6.7%

0.9%

(-0.0)

34,672

0.8%

0.8%

(-0.1)

BMW X6

3,797

-1.2%

0.4%

0.0

11,726

0.1%

0.4%

(-0.0)

15,212

0.1%

0.4%

(-0.0)

Chrysler Group LLC (USA)

161,824

29.4%

17.2%

4.2

509,879

23.1%

15.4%

1.6

649,613

29.2%

15.1%

2.1

Chrysler 200

11,157

-

1.2%

1.2

31,030

-

0.9%

0.9

37,876

-

0.9%

0.9

Chrysler 300

5,924

14.5%

0.6%

0.1

14,018

-2.3%

0.4%

(-0.1)

14,018

-13.9%

0.3%

(-0.1)

Chrysler PT Cruiser

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.2)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.2) (-0.4)

Chrysler Sebring

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.4)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.5)

-

-100.0%

-

Chrysler Town & Country

7,629

-42.0%

0.8%

(-0.5)

25,129

-33.9%

0.8%

(-0.5)

33,982

-15.9%

0.8%

(-0.3)

Dodge Avenger

8,059

30.7%

0.9%

0.2

22,891

49.3%

0.7%

0.2

26,411

42.3%

0.6%

0.1

Dodge Caliber

4,065

-22.3%

0.4%

(-0.1)

13,350

-28.3%

0.4%

(-0.2)

17,169

-28.1%

0.4%

(-0.2)

Dodge Caravan

11,835

-10.4%

1.3%

(-0.1)

41,647

-15.0%

1.3%

(-0.4)

55,301

3.6%

1.3%

(-0.1)

Dodge Challenger

2,904

-16.0%

0.3%

(-0.0)

8,392

-28.6%

0.3%

(-0.1)

12,142

-15.9%

0.3%

(-0.1)

Dodge Charger

6,525

-32.5%

0.7%

(-0.3)

26,316

-7.5%

0.8%

(-0.2)

33,111

-0.7%

0.8%

(-0.1)

Dodge Dakota

2,510

161.5%

0.3%

0.2

7,292

70.3%

0.2%

0.1

8,915

62.1%

0.2%

0.1

Dodge Durango

7,085

-

0.8%

0.8

22,041

-

0.7%

0.7

29,239

-

0.7%

0.7

Dodge Journey

6,298

-30.0%

0.7%

(-0.3)

25,896

-24.5%

0.8%

(-0.4)

33,708

-20.9%

0.8%

(-0.3)

Dodge Nitro

2,308

-6.3%

0.2%

(-0.0)

6,931

-4.9%

0.2%

(-0.0)

8,673

1.8%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Dodge Ram Pickup

-

-

-

-

-

-100.0%

-

(-1.7)

-

-100.0%

-

(-1.9)

Dodge Viper

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

Fiat 500

5,488

-

0.6%

0.6

10,590

-

0.3%

0.3

11,498

-

0.3%

0.3

Fiat Freemont

2,320

-

0.2%

0.2

3,830

-

0.1%

0.1

3,830

-

0.1%

0.1

Jeep Commander

-

-

-

-

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

Jeep Compass

9,121

179.4%

1.0%

0.6

27,674

155.8%

0.8%

0.5

35,611

182.0%

0.8%

0.5

Jeep Grand Cherokee

13,340

15972.3%

1.4%

1.4

40,159

189.2%

1.2%

0.7

51,686

124.4%

1.2%

0.6

Jeep Liberty

6,433

19.4%

0.7%

0.1

19,337

27.9%

0.6%

0.1

23,552

22.0%

0.5%

0.0

Jeep Patriot

6,799

87.3%

0.7%

0.3

21,457

68.6%

0.6%

0.2

29,594

106.4%

0.7%

0.3

Jeep Wrangler

5,305

19.1%

0.6%

0.1

16,963

19.0%

0.5%

0.0

21,989

28.5%

0.5%

0.1

Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

8,136

-9.1%

0.9%

(-0.1)

27,253

15.6%

0.8%

0.0

35,975

29.2%

0.8%

0.1

Ram Pickup

27,787

21.4%

2.9%

0.6

91,403

299.3%

2.8%

2.0

117,570

413.6%

2.7%

2.1

Volkswagen Routan

796

-62.9%

0.1%

(-0.1)

6,280

-16.5%

0.2%

(-0.1)

7,763

-2.9%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Daimler AG (Germany)

13,813

19.3%

1.5%

0.3

38,688

9.6%

1.2%

(-0.0)

49,378

7.9%

1.1%

(-0.0)

Freightliner Sprinter

693

20.5%

0.1%

0.0

2,176

24.1%

0.1%

0.0

2,834

25.3%

0.1%

0.0

Mercedes-Benz GL-Class

3,200

14.8%

0.3%

0.1

8,360

-1.6%

0.3%

(-0.0)

10,640

-3.4%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Mercedes-Benz M-Class

8,320

23.4%

0.9%

0.2

23,456

14.1%

0.7%

0.0

29,840

11.9%

0.7%

0.0

Mercedes-Benz R-Class

1,600

8.5%

0.2%

0.0

4,696

4.4%

0.1%

(-0.0)

6,064

4.0%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Ford Motor Company (USA)

191,378

5.0%

20.3%

1.5

652,047

16.9%

19.7%

1.1

829,241

12.4%

19.2%

0.2

Ford Crown Victoria

8,441

74.3%

0.9%

0.4

23,298

79.7%

0.7%

0.3

30,649

79.0%

0.7%

0.3

Ford Econoline

9,802

-12.6%

1.0%

(-0.1)

41,988

17.7%

1.3%

0.1

53,485

18.4%

1.2%

0.1

Ford Edge

12,355

-2.0%

1.3%

0.0

43,458

8.3%

1.3%

(-0.0)

56,974

8.5%

1.3%

(-0.0)

Ford Escape

26,932

12.6%

2.9%

0.4

82,419

11.2%

2.5%

0.0

108,002

12.8%

2.5%

0.0

Ford Expedition

3,970

50.3%

0.4%

0.1

14,908

62.4%

0.5%

0.1

18,187

40.0%

0.4%

0.1

Ford Explorer

12,329

86.2%

1.3%

0.6

40,148

109.0%

1.2%

0.6

48,739

92.3%

1.1%

0.5

Ford Explorer Sport Trac

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

Ford Fiesta

9,994

1459.1%

1.1%

1.0

28,566

4356.5%

0.9%

0.8

39,476

6058.5%

0.9%

0.9

Ford Flex

2,828

-28.6%

0.3%

(-0.1)

6,053

-47.6%

0.2%

(-0.2)

9,062

-44.8%

0.2%

(-0.2)

Ford Focus

19,416

70.3%

2.1%

0.9

44,772

12.1%

1.4%

0.0

45,072

-16.8%

1.0%

(-0.4)

Ford F-Series

47,728

-3.1%

5.1%

(-0.0)

184,188

28.0%

5.6%

0.8

230,446

21.7%

5.3%

0.5

Ford Fusion

15,416

-28.3%

1.6%

(-0.6)

64,986

-2.5%

2.0%

(-0.3)

90,721

4.5%

2.1%

(-0.1)

Ford Ranger

7,669

-2.7%

0.8%

(-0.0)

25,416

30.7%

0.8%

0.1

32,989

26.6%

0.8%

0.1

Ford Taurus

6,696

-10.0%

0.7%

(-0.1)

21,335

-15.8%

0.6%

(-0.2)

25,240

-23.9%

0.6%

(-0.3)

Lincoln Mark LT

33

-58.8%

0.0%

(-0.0)

131

-52.2%

0.0%

(-0.0)

133

-63.7%

0.0%

(-0.0)

Lincoln MKS

877

-58.4%

0.1%

(-0.1)

3,441

-35.1%

0.1%

(-0.1)

3,827

-44.0%

0.1%

(-0.1)

Lincoln MKT

320

-48.7%

0.0%

(-0.0)

955

-46.1%

0.0%

(-0.0)

1,808

-41.0%

0.0%

(-0.0)

Lincoln MKX

2,176

18.3%

0.2%

0.0

8,259

18.9%

0.2%

0.0

11,003

15.7%

0.3%

0.0

Lincoln MKZ

1,653

-14.2%

0.2%

(-0.0)

9,328

70.6%

0.3%

0.1

11,655

40.1%

0.3%

0.1

Lincoln Navigator

557

-17.2%

0.1%

(-0.0)

2,606

40.5%

0.1%

0.0

3,424

32.9%

0.1%

0.0

Lincoln Town Car

1,500

39.3%

0.2%

0.0

3,340

-10.1%

0.1%

(-0.0)

5,044

-0.5%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Mazda B-Series

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

Mazda Tribute

686

32.7%

0.1%

0.0

2,452

-6.6%

0.1%

(-0.0)

3,140

-30.5%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Mercury Grand Marquis

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.3)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.4)

165

-98.8%

0.0%

(-0.4)

Mercury Mariner

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.3)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.2)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.2)

Mercury Milan

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.2)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.3)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.3)

Mercury Mountaineer

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

Fuji Heavy Industries (Japan)

13,936

-34.2%

1.5%

(-0.7)

59,658

-3.2%

1.8%

(-0.3)

81,970

1.8%

1.9%

(-0.2)

Subaru Legacy

8,484

-33.9%

0.9%

(-0.4)

36,710

-2.4%

1.1%

(-0.1)

50,742

4.9%

1.2%

(-0.1)

Subaru Tribeca

416

20.6%

0.0%

0.0

1,633

3.0%

0.0%

(-0.0)

2,305

3.6%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Toyota Camry

5,036

-37.0%

0.5%

(-0.3)

21,315

-5.0%

0.6%

(-0.1)

28,923

-3.5%

0.7%

(-0.1)

General Motors Company (USA)

270,239

18.2%

28.7%

5.1

832,268

19.5%

25.1%

1.9

1,057,348

18.0%

24.5%

1.4

Buick Enclave

6,820

15.2%

0.7%

0.1

21,097

14.9%

0.6%

0.0

26,841

5.8%

0.6%

Buick LaCrosse

5,503

-22.9%

0.6%

(-0.2)

19,837

-5.9%

0.6%

(-0.1)

22,508

-10.2%

0.5%

(-0.1)

Buick Lucerne

3,147

-1.1%

0.3%

0.0

9,640

56.3%

0.3%

0.1

12,509

102.8%

0.3%

0.1

Buick Regal

3,501

-

0.4%

0.4

4,961

-

0.1%

0.1

4,961

-

0.1%

0.1

Cadillac CTS

5,716

54.0%

0.6%

0.2

17,811

17.1%

0.5%

0.0

23,657

16.9%

0.5%

0.0

(-0.0)

Cadillac DTS

1,640

-39.3%

0.2%

(-0.1)

4,243

-14.5%

0.1%

(-0.0)

5,394

8.7%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Cadillac Escalade

1,680

-17.4%

0.2%

(-0.0)

4,989

-16.5%

0.2%

(-0.0)

6,408

-28.0%

0.1%

(-0.1)

Cadillac Escalade ESV

601

-14.1%

0.1%

(-0.0)

1,744

-41.1%

0.1%

(-0.0)

2,285

-38.2%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Cadillac Escalade EXT

250

1.2%

0.0%

0.0

743

14.0%

0.0%

0.0

978

17.5%

0.0%

0.0

Cadillac SRX

7,017

12.8%

0.7%

0.1

21,243

16.5%

0.6%

0.0

27,343

17.7%

0.6%

0.0

Cadillac STS

821

310.5%

0.1%

0.1

1,662

72.9%

0.1%

0.0

1,907

44.8%

0.0%

0.0

Chevrolet Avalanche

2,041

-22.6%

0.2%

(-0.1)

5,993

2.3%

0.2%

(-0.0)

7,826

5.5%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Chevrolet Aveo

5,621

18.9%

0.6%

0.1

16,087

17.2%

0.5%

0.0

20,263

11.0%

0.5%

(-0.0)

Chevrolet C2

4,271

-26.0%

0.5%

(-0.1)

12,724

-15.7%

0.4%

(-0.1)

15,858

-20.7%

0.4%

(-0.1)

Chevrolet Camaro

8,109

-19.8%

0.9%

(-0.2)

27,900

-3.1%

0.8%

(-0.1)

37,878

5.1%

0.9%

(-0.1)

Chevrolet Captiva

2,931

141.8%

0.3%

0.2

8,803

63.7%

0.3%

0.1

11,036

38.4%

0.3%

0.0

16 - 30 June 2011

Auto Monitor

N AMERICAN ASSEMBLY April 2011

Last 3 Months Assembly Share %

YOY Share Chg

71

Year to Date

Ownership Org/ Brand & Nameplate

Volume

YOY % Chg

Chevrolet Cobalt

-

-100.0%

-

(-1.7)

-

-100.0%

-

(-1.5)

-

-100.0%

-

Chevrolet Colorado

3,883

108.9%

0.4%

0.2

9,933

17.5%

0.3%

0.0

13,233

14.8%

0.3%

0.0

Chevrolet Corvette

998

-38.0%

0.1%

(-0.1)

3,689

-26.8%

0.1%

(-0.1)

4,068

-33.6%

0.1%

(-0.1)

Volume

YOY % Chg

Assembly Share %

YOY Share Chg

Volume

YOY % Chg

Assembly Share %

YOY Share Chg (-1.6)

Chevrolet Cruze

26,184

-

2.8%

2.8

75,155

-

2.3%

2.3

97,469

-

2.3%

2.3

Chevrolet Equinox

18,979

45.3%

2.0%

0.7

62,822

49.3%

1.9%

0.5

81,921

50.2%

1.9%

0.5

Chevrolet Express

5,759

-4.0%

0.6%

(-0.0)

18,312

9.2%

0.6%

(-0.0)

24,365

22.4%

0.6%

0.1

Chevrolet HHR

5,239

49.9%

0.6%

0.2

17,411

11.9%

0.5%

0.0

23,784

13.3%

0.6%

0.0 (-0.0)

Chevrolet Impala

17,543

9.6%

1.9%

0.2

53,388

3.5%

1.6%

(-0.1)

71,537

8.7%

1.7%

Chevrolet Malibu

21,073

5.9%

2.2%

0.2

60,789

4.7%

1.8%

(-0.1)

68,396

-1.9%

1.6%

(-0.2)

Chevrolet Silverado

42,729

43.1%

4.5%

1.4

136,610

27.5%

4.1%

0.6

168,181

17.7%

3.9%

0.2

Chevrolet Suburban

4,184

-26.8%

0.4%

(-0.1)

14,065

-4.7%

0.4%

(-0.1)

17,437

-7.2%

0.4%

(-0.1)

Chevrolet Tahoe

8,926

-7.0%

0.9%

(-0.0)

25,751

-10.9%

0.8%

(-0.2)

34,115

-3.5%

0.8%

(-0.1)

0.9%

0.2

40,442

77.8%

0.9%

0.4

Chevrolet Traverse

10,209

-11.0%

1.1%

(-0.1)

31,404

38.1%

Chevrolet Volt

692

-

0.1%

0.1

2,098

-

0.1%

0.1

2,678

-

0.1%

GMC Acadia

7,743

56.2%

0.8%

0.3

23,615

66.7%

0.7%

0.2

31,600

31.1%

0.7%

0.1

GMC Canyon

873

16.4%

0.1%

0.0

2,668

-11.8%

0.1%

(-0.0)

3,518

-22.4%

0.1%

(-0.0)

0.1

GMC Savana

2,596

37.7%

0.3%

0.1

8,584

29.0%

0.3%

0.0

10,709

38.9%

0.2%

0.0

GMC Sierra Pickups

16,443

-2.7%

1.7%

(-0.0)

53,587

9.7%

1.6%

(-0.0)

66,351

2.6%

1.5%

(-0.1)

GMC Terrain

8,582

65.5%

0.9%

0.4

28,829

72.2%

0.9%

0.3

38,348

76.8%

0.9%

0.3

GMC Yukon

3,259

-29.0%

0.3%

(-0.1)

11,692

-15.8%

0.4%

(-0.1)

16,659

-0.2%

0.4%

(-0.0)

GMC Yukon XL

2,804

11.0%

0.3%

0.0

9,252

5.3%

0.3%

(-0.0)

11,748

5.3%

0.3%

(-0.0)

Hummer H3

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

Hummer H3T

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

Saab 9-4X

1,872

-

0.2%

0.2

3,137

-

0.1%

0.1

3,137

-

0.1%

0.1

Saturn Outlook

-

-

-

-

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

Saturn VUE

-

-

-

-

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

Honda Motor Company (Japan)

53,624

-52.1%

5.7%

(-5.9)

276,054

-19.1%

8.3%

(-3.1)

387,987

-12.3%

9.0%

(-2.4)

0.0%

0.0

1,170

21.9%

Acura CSX

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

1,021

36.0%

0.0%

0.0

Acura MDX

3,058

-36.1%

0.3%

(-0.2)

14,679

-8.3%

0.4%

(-0.1)

20,791

-4.1%

0.5%

(-0.1)

Acura RDX

677

-60.2%

0.1%

(-0.1)

4,038

-22.9%

0.1%

(-0.1)

6,062

-16.4%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Acura TL

1,637

-39.5%

0.2%

(-0.1)

9,538

5.2%

0.3%

(-0.0)

11,390

-11.3%

0.3%

(-0.1)

Acura ZDX

29

-95.6%

0.0%

(-0.1)

341

-87.7%

0.0%

(-0.1)

490

-86.3%

0.0%

(-0.1)

Honda Accord

11,478

-56.3%

1.2%

(-1.5)

57,781

-26.4%

1.7%

(-0.9)

82,448

-18.1%

1.9%

(-0.7)

Honda Civic

12,612

-54.5%

1.3%

(-1.5)

55,989

-30.6%

1.7%

(-1.0)

82,177

-21.2%

1.9%

(-0.8)

Honda Crosstour

362

-91.9%

0.0%

(-0.4)

4,633

-63.8%

0.1%

(-0.3)

6,134

-63.2%

0.1%

(-0.3)

Honda CR-V

10,534

-46.0%

1.1%

(-0.9)

54,556

-14.1%

1.6%

(-0.5)

76,749

-6.7%

1.8%

(-0.3) 0.0

Honda Element

1,201

-31.9%

0.1%

(-0.1)

5,401

30.5%

0.2%

0.0

7,500

33.0%

0.2%

Honda Odyssey

5,803

-42.8%

0.6%

(-0.4)

31,772

6.7%

1.0%

(-0.0)

43,360

14.1%

1.0%

0.0

Honda Pilot

6,233

-38.9%

0.7%

(-0.4)

32,855

7.2%

1.0%

(-0.0)

44,946

15.1%

1.0%

0.0

Honda Ridgeline

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.2)

3,450

-53.3%

0.1%

(-0.1)

4,770

-50.3%

0.1%

(-0.1)

Hyundai Motor Company (South Korea) 48,742

29.9%

5.2%

1.3

153,450

41.5%

4.6%

1.0

199,405

47.8%

4.6%

1.1

Hyundai Elantra/i30

-

1.2%

1.2

33,410

-

1.0%

1.0

41,444

-

1.0%

1.0

Hyundai Santa Fe

8,323

7.2%

0.9%

0.1

26,713

12.9%

0.8%

0.0

34,734

13.2%

0.8%

0.0

Hyundai Sonata/i40

11,222 17,180

-11.3%

1.8%

(-0.2)

54,722

3.0%

1.7%

(-0.1)

73,234

16.0%

1.7%

0.1

Kia Optima

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Kia Sorento

12,017

15.6%

1.3%

0.2

38,605

21.9%

1.2%

0.1

49,993

21.7%

1.2%

0.1

Mitsubishi Motors Corp (Japan)

3,019

38.5%

0.3%

0.1

11,409

44.1%

0.3%

0.1

14,930

40.7%

0.3%

0.1

Mitsubishi Eclipse

831

76.4%

0.1%

0.0

2,797

47.6%

0.1%

0.0

3,017

58.6%

0.1%

0.0

Mitsubishi Endeavor

1,826

897.8%

0.2%

0.2

3,387

149.2%

0.1%

0.1

3,786

80.0%

0.1%

0.0

Mitsubishi Galant

362

-76.3%

0.0%

(-0.1)

5,225

12.1%

0.2%

0.0

8,127

23.0%

0.2%

0.0

Nissan Motor (Japan)

54,713

-31.9%

5.8%

(-2.5)

254,215

4.4%

7.7%

(-0.4)

346,645

8.3%

8.0%

(-0.2)

Infiniti QX series

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.1)

Nissan Altima

16,332

-32.3%

1.7%

(-0.8)

74,364

0.6%

2.2%

(-0.2)

97,734

2.0%

2.3%

(-0.2)

Nissan Armada

1,309

-37.0%

0.1%

(-0.1)

5,019

-7.5%

0.2%

(-0.0)

7,193

6.0%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Nissan Frontier

2,838

-30.9%

0.3%

(-0.1)

13,578

9.2%

0.4%

(-0.0)

17,897

8.2%

0.4%

(-0.0)

Nissan March

1,312

-

0.1%

0.1

4,426

-

0.1%

0.1

4,426

-

0.1%

0.1

Nissan Maxima

4,060

-35.8%

0.4%

(-0.2)

17,282

-8.9%

0.5%

(-0.1)

22,868

-6.1%

0.5%

(-0.1)

Nissan NV-Series

1,030

-

0.1%

0.1

3,789

-

0.1%

0.1

3,988

-

0.1%

0.1

Nissan Pathfinder

1,569

-47.8%

0.2%

(-0.1)

9,002

20.1%

0.3%

0.0

12,526

37.9%

0.3%

0.1

Nissan Pickup

2,352

32.1%

0.2%

0.1

9,496

56.0%

0.3%

0.1

13,625

63.2%

0.3%

0.1

Nissan Sentra

7,900

-23.7%

0.8%

(-0.2)

36,166

13.6%

1.1%

0.0

53,124

25.0%

1.2%

0.1

Nissan Tiida

2,998

-42.8%

0.3%

(-0.2)

15,388

6.8%

0.5%

(-0.0)

21,543

15.8%

0.5%

0.0

Nissan Titan

1,558

-25.9%

0.2%

(-0.1)

7,437

0.4%

0.2%

(-0.0)

9,489

-6.5%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Nissan Tsuru

3,213

-47.8%

0.3%

(-0.3)

16,355

-12.5%

0.5%

(-0.1)

23,589

-3.0%

0.5%

(-0.1)

Nissan Versa

6,994

-42.8%

0.7%

(-0.5)

35,902

-4.2%

1.1%

(-0.2)

50,264

-2.5%

1.2%

(-0.2)

Nissan Xterra

1,148

-39.2%

0.1%

(-0.1)

5,581

-14.3%

0.2%

(-0.0)

7,799

-6.5%

0.2%

(-0.0)

Suzuki Equator

100

-37.5%

0.0%

(-0.0)

430

13.2%

0.0%

0.0

580

31.8%

0.0%

0.0

NUMMI (USA)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-2.1)

-

-100.0%

-

(-2.3)

Toyota Corolla

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.0)

-

-100.0%

-

(-1.5)

-

-100.0%

-

(-1.6)

Toyota Tacoma

-

-

-

-

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.6)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.7)

Tesla Motors (USA)

148

102.7%

0.0%

0.0

469

111.3%

0.0%

0.0

617

114.2%

0.0%

0.0

Tesla Roadster

148

102.7%

0.0%

0.0

469

111.3%

0.0%

0.0

617

114.2%

0.0%

0.0

Toyota Motor Corporation (Japan) 72,330

-33.3%

7.7%

(-3.5)

302,918

2.6%

9.2%

(-0.7)

417,489

5.8%

9.7%

(-0.5)

Lexus RX Series

4,158

-43.6%

0.4%

(-0.3)

18,398

-16.2%

0.6%

(-0.2)

25,044

-13.1%

0.6%

(-0.2)

Toyota Avalon

2,850

-31.3%

0.3%

(-0.1)

10,658

36.1%

0.3%

0.1

14,376

36.6%

0.3%

0.1 (-1.0)

Toyota Camry

12,923

-45.6%

1.4%

(-1.1)

49,103

-29.9%

1.5%

(-0.9)

68,187

-31.3%

1.6%

Toyota Corolla

11,441

-28.4%

1.2%

(-0.4)

52,123

27.5%

1.6%

0.2

71,738

28.3%

1.7%

0.2

Toyota Highlander

5,566

-22.0%

0.6%

(-0.1)

25,385

37.6%

0.8%

0.2

35,436

44.6%

0.8%

0.2

Toyota Matrix

1,141

-68.2%

0.1%

(-0.2)

3,836

-66.3%

0.1%

(-0.3)

5,781

-63.5%

0.1%

(-0.3)

Toyota RAV4

8,951

-32.3%

0.9%

(-0.4)

39,162

41.6%

1.2%

0.3

53,763

54.0%

1.2%

0.3

Toyota Sequoia

1,188

-19.5%

0.1%

(-0.0)

4,152

-11.1%

0.1%

(-0.0)

5,652

-15.5%

0.1%

(-0.0)

Toyota Sienna

7,172

-37.3%

0.8%

(-0.4)

31,590

-2.5%

1.0%

(-0.1)

43,736

12.7%

1.0%

0.0

Toyota Tacoma

6,717

49.4%

0.7%

0.2

27,950

102.2%

0.8%

0.4

39,228

115.8%

0.9%

0.4

Toyota Tundra

6,260

-34.2%

0.7%

(-0.3)

26,108

-2.5%

0.8%

(-0.1)

36,150

4.8%

0.8%

(-0.1)

Toyota Venza

3,963

-37.8%

0.4%

(-0.2)

14,453

-25.1%

0.4%

(-0.2)

18,398

-30.5%

0.4%

(-0.3)

Volkswagen (Germany)

28,426

-16.4%

3.0%

(-0.5)

120,374

16.7%

3.6%

0.2

156,333

22.3%

3.6%

0.3 -

Volkswagen Beetle

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Volkswagen Bora

36

-97.2%

0.0%

(-0.1)

97

-97.8%

0.0%

(-0.1)

120

-98.1%

0.0%

(-0.2)

Volkswagen Golf/Jetta Variant

8,517

0.5%

0.9%

0.0

36,083

41.8%

1.1%

0.2

46,864

51.0%

1.1%

0.3

Volkswagen Jetta

19,873

0.5%

2.1%

0.1

84,194

41.8%

2.5%

0.6

109,349

51.0%

2.5%

0.7

Volkswagen New Beetle

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.5)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.5)

-

-100.0%

-

(-0.5)

Total Light Vehicle

942,804

-2.6%

100.0%

-

3,310,011

10.5%

100.0%

-

4,311,882

11.4%

100.0%

-

72

Auto Monitor

ADVERTISERS’ LIST CORPORATE

16 - 30 June 2011

Pg No. ........Advertiser ...................................................................................Tel ..................................................E-mail ...................................................................... Website 44 ..............AB Diachem Systems Pvt Ltd ......................................................+91-11-25155456 ...........................info@anandbros.com .............................................. www.anandbros.com 50 ..............Abilities India Pistons & Rings Ltd ..............................................+91-120-4623761 ..........................aip.del@aippistons.co.in ........................................ www.aippistons.com 48 ..............ADEA- Automotive Dealership Excellance Awards ......................+91-22-30034650 ..........................prachi.mutha@infomedia18.in ............................... www.adea.in 54 ..............Aftermarket Magzine ..................................................................+91-22-30034651...........................b2b@infomedia18.in ...............................................

33...............Anand Automotive Systems ........................................................+91-11-26564542 ...........................arpita.bhatia@anandgroupindia.com..................... www.@anandgroupindia.com 56 ..............ARB Bearings Ltd ........................................................................+91-9810677476............................vinod@arb-bearings.com ........................................ www.arb-bearings.com 13...............Assab Sripad Steels Ltd ...............................................................+91-44-24951980 ..........................chennai@assabsripad.com...................................... www.assabsripad.com 15...............Carl Zeiss India Pvt Ltd ...............................................................+91-80-43438102 ..........................imtndia@zeiss.co.in ................................................ www.zeiss.co.in 16...............Dr. Dinesh & Ramesh Engineers Pvt Ltd.....................................+91-79-25893704 ..........................hpatel@drecasting.com .......................................... www.drecasting.com 16...............Dynascan Inspection Systems Co ................................................+91-80-41102747...........................dynascan@vsnl.com ................................................ www.dynascan.info 66 ..............ECI International Ltd ..................................................................+44 (0) 1892863888 ......................sales@eci-international.com ................................... www.eci-international.com 39...............Electromech Material Handling Sys Pvt Ltd................................+91-20-66542222 ..........................getcranes@emech.in ............................................... www.emech.in 28 ..............Electronica Hitech Engineering Pvt Ltd ......................................+91-20-30435400 ..........................sss@electronicahitech.com ..................................... www.electronicahitech.com 59...............Engineering Expo .......................................................................+91-9819552270............................engexpo@infomedia18.in ....................................... www.engg-expo.com 55...............Escorts Limited ...........................................................................+91-129-2293990 ..........................shivam.sawhney@escortsed.com ........................... www.escortsgroup.com 53 ..............Etas Automotive India Pvt Ltd ....................................................+91-80-41916581 ..........................sales.in@etas.com ................................................... www.etas.com 31...............Ferromatik Milacron India Ltd ...................................................+91-79-25890081 ..........................salesfmi@milacron.com .......................................... www.milacronindia.com 67 ..............Forging Machinery Manufacturing Co ........................................+91-161-5011755 ...........................info@nkhammers.com ............................................ www.nkhhammers.com 7 ................Francis Klein & Co Pvt Ltd ..........................................................+91-80-22272781 ..........................sales@francisklein.in .............................................. www.francisklein.in 42...............G W Precision Tools India Pvt Ltd ...............................................+91-80-40431252 ..........................info@gwindia.in ...................................................... www.gwindia.in 25 ..............Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd. ......................................................+91-22-67962751 ..........................trmktg@godrej.com ................................................ www.godrejtoolings.com 46 ..............Goodie Enterprises .....................................................................+91-11-41613643 ...........................goodie@goodiesons.com ........................................ www.goodiesons.com 45...............Greaves Cotton Limited ..............................................................+91-22-24397575 ...........................rrao@greavesmail.com ........................................... www.greavescotton.com BIC .............Guhring India Private Limited ....................................................+91-80-40322500..........................info@guhring.in ..................................................... www.guhring.in 57 ..............Happy Forging Ltd ......................................................................+91-161-2510421 ...........................mail@happyforgingsltd.com ................................... www.happyforgingsltd.com 6 ................Hueco Electronic (India) Pvt Ltd .................................................+91-20-30455161 ...........................salesindia@hueco.com............................................ www.hueco.com 5 ................IAC International Automotive India Pvt.. Ltd. ............................+91-20 -66538604 .........................ASharma@iacna.com .............................................. www.iacna.com 52 ..............Indian Machine Tools Manufacturers’ Association .....................+91-80-66246600..........................augustin@imtma.in................................................. www.imtma.in 58 ..............Indian Machine Tools Manufacturers’ Association .....................+91-80-66246514 ..........................anuj@imtma.in ....................................................... www.imtma.in 64 ..............Indian Machine Tools Manufacturers’ Association .....................+91-80-66246600..........................imtma@imtma.in .................................................... www.imtma.in 19...............ISMT Limited...............................................................................+91-20-66024901 ..........................sachin.joshi@ismt.co.in........................................... www.ismt.com 73 ..............Jyoti CNC Automation Pvt. Ltd. ...................................................+91-2827-287081 ..........................info@jyoti.co.in ....................................................... www.jyoti.co.in FIC..............Kamal Envirotech .......................................................................+91-124-4367305 ..........................enquiry@kamalcedsolution.com ............................ www.kamalenvirotechgroup.com 49...............Komax Automation India Pvt. Ltd. .............................................+91-124-4599100...........................info.dei@komaxgroup.com ..................................... www.komax.com 75...............Komet Precision Tool India Pvt Ltd ............................................+91-80-280780000 ........................info.in@kometgroup.com .......................................

FGF.............Larsen & Toubro Limited ............................................................+91-9967800456 ...........................SM.Haridas@larsentoubro.com ............................... www.larsentoubro.com 72 ..............Litel Infrared Systems Pvt Ltd .....................................................+91-20-66300636 ..........................sales@litelir.com ..................................................... www.litelir.com 51...............MAG Industrial Automation Systems ..........................................+91-80-40677000 .........................sales-India@mag-ias.in ........................................... www.mag-ias.in 22 ..............Mahr Metrology India (P) Ltd. .....................................................+91-44-42170531 ..........................r.ganesan@mahr.com ............................................. www.mahr.com 63 ..............Marks Pryor Marketing Technology ............................................+91-20-66743300 ..........................info@markspryor.com ............................................ www.markspryor.com 40,41 ..........Meiban Engineering Technologies Pvt Ltd .................................+91-80-26860600 ..........................sales-turning@meibanengg.com ............................ www.meibanengg.com 3,BC ...........Micromatic Machine Tools..........................................................+91-80-41492285 ..........................mmtblr@acemicromatic.com ................................. www.acemicromatic.com 8 ................Mipox ..........................................................................................+91-80-65830898..........................rag-rao@mipox.co.jp............................................... www.mipoxindia.com 21...............Misumi India Pvt Ltd ..................................................................+91-20-66470000 ..........................sales@misumi.co.in ................................................. http://in.misumi-ec.com 36 ..............MMC Hardmetal India Pvt Ltd ....................................................+91-80-23516083 ..........................mmcindia@mmc.co.jp ............................................ www.mitsubishicarbide.com 65...............Napino Auto & Electronics Ltd. ..................................................+91-124-2290050 ..........................info@napino.com .................................................... www.napino.com 10...............Ningbo Elite Mold Manufacture Co.,Ltd .....................................+86-574-8614-8158 .......................tracy@cmmould.com.cn ......................................... www.elitemould.cc 9 ................Oetiker India Pvt Ltd ..................................................................+91-2192-250107 ...........................akeswani@oetiker.com ........................................... www.oetiker.com 35...............Omron Automation Pvt. Ltd. ......................................................+91-80-40726400..........................in_enquiry@ap.omron.com .................................... www.omron-ap.com 23 ..............Padmini VNA Mechatronics Pvt. Ltd...........................................+91-124-3207398 ...........................sales@padminiengg.com ........................................ www.padminivna.com 24...............Patvin Engineering (P) Ltd ..........................................................+91-22-27780310...........................patvin@patvin.co.in ................................................ www.patvin.co.in 47...............Rane Holdings Limited ...............................................................+91-44-28112472 ..........................v.usha@rane.co.in ................................................... www.rane.co.in 20 ..............Rohan Standox Autolack.............................................................+91-22-65803331 ..........................sales@spraytec.net ................................................. www.spraytec.net 18...............Sarveshwari Technologies Ltd ....................................................+91-11-27023750 ...........................info@sarveshwari.com ............................................ www.sarveshwari.com 29 ..............Seamless Autotech Pvt Ltd .........................................................+91-2135-662431...........................info@seamlessautotech.com .................................. www.seamlessautotech.com 38 ..............Shimadzu Analytical (I) Pvt. Ltd..................................................+91-22-29204741 ...........................info@shimadzu.in ................................................... www.shimadzu.in 34 ..............Shri Ram Polytech ......................................................................+91-11-23316801 ...........................info@shrirampolytech.com .................................... www.shrirampolytech.com 18...............Sreelakshmi Traders ...................................................................+91-44-24343343 ..........................sreelakshmitraders@gmail.com.............................. www.sreelakshmitraders.com 43...............Starragheckert Machine Tools Pvt. Ltd .......................................+91-80-42770600..........................sales.in@starragheckert.com .................................. www.starragheckert.com 27 ..............Subros Ltd...................................................................................+91-11-23414946 ...........................pmehra@subros.com .............................................. www.subroslimited.com 37...............The Supreme Industries Ltd. ......................................................+91-9892569003 ...........................protec@supreme.co.in ............................................ www.supreme.co.in 61...............Tyrolit India Superabrasive Pvt. Ltd ...........................................+91-80-40953259 ..........................subrahmanya.kumar@tyrolit.com .......................... www.tylolit.com 60 ..............Unitech Exhhibitions Private Limited .........................................+91-44-24543322 ..........................info@unitechexpo.com ........................................... www.weldindia.com 11 ...............Varroc Engineering Pvt Ltd .........................................................+91-240-2556227 ..........................varroc.info@varrocgroup.com ................................ www.varrocgroup.com 26...............Windsor Machines Limited .........................................................+91-79-25841591...........................sales.imm@windsormachines.com ......................... www.windsormachines.com 17...............Yamazaki Mazak India Pvt Ltd ...................................................+91-2137-668800 ..........................sudhir_patankar@mazakindia.com ........................ www.mazak.com Q Our consistent advertisers

16 - 30 June 2011

GLOBAL WATCH

Auto Monitor

73

Mercedes-Benz in Russia: new sales record planned for 2011

D

uring the first four months of the year, Mercedes-Ben z ha s grown stronger in Russia than in any other market. Sales were at record levels in each month and rose to a total of 77.2 percent to 7,764 passenger cars. In fullyear 2010, Mercedes-Benz sold 19,724 units in Russia. This is a new all-time high and represents an increase of 63.7 percent. Over the past ten years, sales in Russia have risen nine fold.

Executive Vice President Sales and Marketing MercedesBenz Cars, Dr Joachim Schmidt said, ‘Along with China, Russia is one of our most important growth markets and will remain so for the next years. We’re very satisfied with our development there. Since the beginning of the year, we have been the premium brand with the highest sales volumes and we are growing faster

Daimler AG and Rolls-Royce Group JV welcome Tognum deal

D

aimler AG and RollsRoyce Group, through their 50:50 joint venture, have reached an agreement with Tognum AG concerning their voluntary public take over offer for all Tognum shares. The offer price for Tognum will be increased by Euro 2-26 per share.

In addition, the acceptance threshold for the bid will be reduced to 30 percent, from the 50 percent plus one share originally stated in the offer document. The partners are convinced that this transaction presents the most compelling option for Tognum and is in the best interest of all of its stakeholders. Members of the executive and advisory board holding Tognum shares declared that they would tender their shares into the offer.

Bodo Uebber, CFO, Daimler AG

Chief Financial Officer and Member of the Board of Management of Daimler, Bodo Uebber, said ‘The agreement is a milestone in Tognum’s history.

With this reasonable increase of our offer, we have reached out to the management and all other shareholders of Tognum.’

Finance Director, Rolls-Royce Group, Andrew Shilston, said, ‘The joint venture will combine the innovation, technology and engineering expertise of three world class companies to accelerate growth and to create a world leader in this important market.

Tognum’s management has supported the industrial logic of this proposal from the outset and we are pleased that we have now reached an agreement that will take us forward.’

(Inset) Dr Joachim Schmidt, Executive VP Sales & Marketing, Mercedes-Benz

than our core competitors. We want to maintain this position for the full year as well. In 2011, we aim to surpass last year’s sales record and to grow faster than the total market. We are creating the conditions for this also by further expanding our dealership network.’

Market Growth The overall Russian automotive market has grown by 30 percent last year, with the number of new passenger car registrations rising to 1.8 million. The company currently expects substantial growth in 2011 as well, with the total pas-

senger car market expanding by 25 percent.

Mercedes-Benz has 54 dealerships and franchise service workshops in Russia and plans to add ten more this year. As a result, Mercedes-Benz is represented in 37 cities throughout Russia. The national subsidiary Mercedes-Benz RUS is responsible for sales of Mercedes-Benz passenger vehicles in Russia.

After its foundation in 1994, it was the fi rst sales company of a western automaker in Russia.

Since the beginning of the year, Mercedes-Benz has posted a high double-digit growth in all product segments in Russia. The best-selling model is the E-Class sedan.

Sales of the sedan have increased by 75 percent to 1,827 units since January, enabling it to remain the market leader in its segment. The company sold 4,788 sedans in fullyear 2010 (+112.1 percent).

The C-Class sedan is also popular, with 1,039 customers opting for this vehicle between Januar y and April.

This represents an increase of 83.6 percent. A total of 2,847 units were sold in 2010 (+89.2 percent). The new-generation C-Class was introduced in Russia in April, further boosting sales in the country. In July, it will be followed by the new SLK. Mercedes-Benz is also the market leader in the SUV segment. The sales has doubled during the past four months, rising to 3,398 units. Deliveries of SUVs totalled 7,979 units in all of last year (+63.9 percent).

Sales of the S-Class sedan are also growing at a rate, increasing by 18.6 percent to 478 units. In all of 2010, a total of 1,718 customers (+28.8 percent) decided to buy one of the luxury sedans.

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Auto Monitor

Products .....................................................................Pg. No. 2d/3d laser cutting .....................................................28 3d coordinate measuring machine ............................15 Acc. Padel sensor assy. ...............................................23 Adea - automotive dealership excellence awards ......48 Advanced auto crimping ............................................49 Aftermarket ................................................................55 Air chiller ....................................................................31 Aluminium castings....................................................16 Analytical instruments ...............................................38 Auto parts ..................................................................57 Autocoding .................................................................54 Automatic painting system ........................................24 Automotive electrical components ............................11 Automotive products .................................................33 Automotive wire harness ...........................................65 Axles ...........................................................................57 Bearings for automotive ............................................57 Belt and roller ............................................................49 Billet shearing machines ............................................67 Brake linings ..............................................................47 Brake shoe .................................................................55 Bus a/c ........................................................................27 C frame power press ..................................................67 Capacitors discharge ignitors .....................................65 Car paints ...................................................................20 Car polish ...................................................................20 Castings ......................................................................16 Ced/ktl coatings .........................................................FIC Clamps........................................................................9 Clutch plates...............................................................55 CNC .............................................................................73 CNC hmcs ...................................................................73 CNC lathes ..................................................................3,BIC CNC machines ............................................................73 CNC oval turning centers ............................................73 CNC turn mill centers .................................................73 CNC turning center .....................................................73 CNC vertical machining center ...................................73 CNC/vmc machines.....................................................17 Cold forming machines ..............................................51 Combination switches ................................................65 Compact chiller ..........................................................31 Compact measurement modules ...............................53 Compaction & concreting equipment. .......................45 Compressors ...............................................................27 Condensers .................................................................27 Consoles and cockpits ................................................5 Contour evaluation in single trace .............................22 Cooling module ..........................................................27 Counters & power supplies ........................................35 Countersinks ..............................................................BIC Crankshafts ................................................................59 Crimping machine ......................................................28 Cutting tools ...............................................................36 Cv joint machines .......................................................51 Cylindrical grinders ....................................................3,BIC Dehumidified air dryer ..............................................31 Diamond tools............................................................FGF Die casting dies ..........................................................25 Die casting engineering services ................................25 Die-casting .................................................................10 Dies ............................................................................10 Diesel engines (10-1000hp) ........................................45 Diesel/kerosene engines. Power sprayer....................45 Door and trim systems ...............................................5 Drilling tools...............................................................BIC Drying & curing technology for water based paints ..73 Dual head lamp relay .................................................6

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16 - 30 June 2011

PRODUCT INDEX E-coatings solutions ...................................................FIC Ecu interface modules ...............................................53 Egr valve .....................................................................23 Electronic control unit ...............................................23 Encoders.....................................................................35 Engine valves..............................................................47 Envirnmental monitoring systems .............................38 Exhibition - Engineering Expo ....................................60 Expandable mono block-reamers ..............................75 Factory automation....................................................21 Five axis machining centers .......................................43 Flooring and acoustic systems ...................................5 Forging press ..............................................................72 Forgings......................................................................57 Form&cylindercity testers ..........................................15 Four axis horizontal machining centers .....................43 Friction drop hammers ..............................................67 Friction screw press ...................................................67 Fuel pumps ................................................................6 Granulator ..................................................................31 Gravity die castings ....................................................16 Grinder .......................................................................31 Grinding machines .....................................................61 Grinding tools for hard materials ...............................61 Gun drills ....................................................................BIC H frame power press ..................................................67 Hammers....................................................................67 Hardware in loop(hil) system .....................................53 Headliner and overhead systems ...............................5 Hollow bars ................................................................19 Hopper dryer..............................................................31 Hopper loader ............................................................31 Horizontal boring machines ......................................51 Horizontal CNC machines...........................................73 Horizontal machining center .....................................73 Horizontal machining centers ....................................51 Horizontal turning centers .........................................51 Hot, cold & warm forged machined parts .................11 Hvacs & evaporators ..................................................27 Ic engine valves ..........................................................11 Ignition modules ........................................................6 Industrial control & sensing devices ..........................35 Industrial metrology ..................................................15 Industrial scientific instruments ................................38 Injection moulding machine......................................26 Instrument panels ......................................................5 Laser shaping .............................................................61 Level controllers .........................................................35 Lightweight diesel engines .........................................45 Lightweight petrol......................................................45 Low pressure die castings ..........................................16 Lubricants ..................................................................56 Machine tools .............................................................7 Machinery steel ..........................................................13 Manufacture of trailers & truck bodies ......................29 Marking solutions.......................................................65 Marpreset ...................................................................22 Marsurf ld 120 roughness ..........................................22 Material handling .......................................................39 Measurement .............................................................22 Measuring & monitoring relay for 1ph/3ph ...............35 Metal cutting tools .....................................................42 Micro measurement modules ....................................53 Milling cutters ............................................................BIC Model based design ...................................................53 Modular tooling system .............................................BIC Mould temperature controller ...................................31 Multi gauging systems ................................................15 Non-ferrous castings ..................................................16 Opto-electropnic systems...........................................15 Other interior and exterior components....................5 Paint circulatin system ...............................................24 Paint pumps ...............................................................24 Pcd &carbide reamers................................................75 Photo electric sensors ................................................35 Physical testing & measuring equipments .................38 Pipe extrusion line for pvc/ppr/pe .............................26 Pistons & pistons rings ...............................................50 Plastic moulded components ....................................11 Polymer conveyer belt ...............................................31 Powder coating system ..............................................24 Power chucking cylinders ..........................................3,BIC

Power steering systems ..............................................47 Power tiller .................................................................45 Precision ....................................................................10 Precision steel ............................................................63 Press tools ..................................................................25 Press tools engineering services.................................25 Profile bending machine ............................................28 Profile projectors .......................................................16 Profilers and gantry machines - 3 & 5 axis.................51 Protective packaging and cushioning solutions .........37 Proximity sensors .......................................................35 Pumpsets and power reapers ....................................45 Pvc solutions ..............................................................34 Quality steel ...............................................................13 Rapid prototyping tools for automotive software......53 Reamers .....................................................................BIC Rectifier ......................................................................6 Regulator....................................................................6 Resistor assembly .......................................................66 Robot system..............................................................31 Roundness ..................................................................15 Safety lig.....................................................................35 Scalewatcher ..............................................................44 Sealer dispensing system ...........................................24 Seat assemblies ..........................................................11 Seat belt systems ........................................................47 Self adhesive tapes .....................................................18 Solid carbide drills .....................................................42,75 Solid carbide drills with ic ..........................................42 Solid carbide mills......................................................42 Solid carbide reamers ................................................42 Solid carbide reamers with ic.....................................42 Solid carbide special drills .........................................42 Solid carbide special mills..........................................42 Solid carbide special reamers ....................................42 Solid carbite tools ......................................................36 Solid mono block reamers .........................................75 Soses & tubes .............................................................27 Special boring bars.....................................................75 Special boring bars.....................................................75 Special fine boring tools.............................................75 Special line boring tools .............................................75 Special machines........................................................51 Special purpose machine ...........................................25 Special reami..............................................................BIC Spray equipments ......................................................46 Spray guns ..................................................................24 Spray painting equipment .........................................20 Standard fine boring tools .........................................75 Strip steel ...................................................................13 Super finishing film - variofilm...................................8 Switching relays..........................................................35 Taps ............................................................................BIC Tempurature controllers ............................................35 Thermocompression moulds .....................................25 Threading tools ..........................................................75 Timers ........................................................................35 Tool bits .....................................................................13 Tool presetters ...........................................................22 Tool presetting ...........................................................22 Tool steel ....................................................................13 Total data management .............................................22 Tube bending machine ..............................................28 Tungsten carbide metal cutting tools ........................FIC Turning machine solutions.........................................40 Turret punch press .....................................................28 Turrets ........................................................................3 Turrets ........................................................................BIC Tyre chanding accessories ..........................................18 Tyre repair tools .........................................................18 Tyre service tools ........................................................18 Tyrexpo india 2011 .....................................................67 Vaccum pump ............................................................23 Ventilators ..................................................................18 Vertical line series ......................................................73 Vertical machining centers.........................................3,BIC Vertical machining centers 3 & 5 axis ........................51 Vertical turning centers ..............................................51 Vision sensors.............................................................35 Vmc-linear series ........................................................75 Well india 2011 ...........................................................61 Wheel alignment accessories .....................................18 Wheel balancing accessories ......................................18

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16 - 30 June 2011

Auto Monitor

GLOBAL WATCH

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Advanced driving simulator opened in Sweden

S

weden’s most advanced driving simulator was inaugurated in Gothenburg recently. The driving simulator will be used by Volvo Group to continue development of the world’s safest trucks, buses and construction equipment as well as to strengthen Gothenburg’s position as a world-leading automotive research centre.

‘In a world where regions compete to be the hub of development, this comprises a concrete enhancement of our international competitive strength and that of Sweden in advanced automotive research. From an international perspective, the simulator constitutes a major competitive advantage and it is fantastic that we are getting it here in Gothenburg,’ said Head of Product and Road Safety, Volvo Group, Urban Wass.

situations in current and future traffic environments.

‘The simulator provides us with the opportunity to study driver reactions to all imaginable events, and we can repeat the same chain of events multiple times to study variations in driver behaviour. This is both safe and cost-effective, as well as providing us with deeper knowledge that enables the development of optimal safety systems,’ said Urban Wass.

For example, the simulator can be used in the development of braking and steering systems to make safer and more efficient vehicle concepts possible.

It can also be utilised to study how the vehicle best conveys various types of information and warnings to the driver.

In the long-term, the simulator will be utilised to develop

The new simulator creates a more realistic experience and increases opportunities for creating and studying situations in current and future traffic environments

The simulator provides with the opportunity to study driver reactions to all imaginable events, and the same chain of events can be repeated multiple times to study variations in driver behaviour. This is both safe and costeffective and provides with deeper knowledge that enables the development of optimal safety systems The simulator

KUB® Drillmax XL ®

KUB Primarily, the Volvo Group utilises driving simulators to study driver reactions in various critical situations, for example, to study how the truck and driver interact with each other. Increased knowledge enables truck safety systems to be designed according to driver behaviour to a higher degree than at present.

advanced vehicles that can communicate with other vehicles, road-users and transport environments.

‘It is extremely improbable that a more advanced sa fet y development than this can be found anywhere else in the world,’ added Wass.

The driving simulator was opened at Lindholmen in Gothenburg in the presence of, among others, Volvo’s CEO Leif Johansson and Sweden’s Minister for Infrastructure Catharina ElmsäterSvärd.

Drillmax

– Diameter range: 3,0 – 16,0 mm gradation: 0.1 mm – Variant: twisted, IC, TIALN – Length: 5xD and 8xD

– 4 x guide chamfers – Diameter range: for 20×D: 3,00 – 10,0 mm for 30×D: 3,00 – 8,00 mm – Reliable drilling up to 30×D, with no pecking

KUB Quatron® KUB K2® Until now, Sweden’s most advanced driving simulator has been located in Linköping and owned by VTI, the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute. The new simulator, again managed by VTI, will be located in Gothenburg.

The Volvo Group played a key role in bringing the new simulator to Gothenburg, including providing specialist knowledge in formulating the requirements specification. We have argued the case that the Swedish automotive industry needs this simulator and that Volvo will utilise the simulator’s capacity with a range of development projects,’ stated Urban Wass.

The key features of the new advanced simulator are primarily that it provides a true-to-life feel for both braking and large steering wheel movements. In the previous simulator, both braking and steering wheel movements could be simulated but not concurrently; one had to choose one or the other. The new simulator creates a more realistic experience and increases opportunities for creating and studying

– Diameter range: 12 – 15,9 mm – Internal coolant supply – Coating: TiAlN – 3xD,5xD,7xD

– Diameter range: for 2xD, 3xD: 14 – 65 mm, RH cutting with ABS 50 for 2xD, 3xD: 14 – 44 mm, cylindrical shank (combination) – High stability and economy by using square inserts

KUB Pentron® – Diameter range: 14 – 44mm – Toolholder 4xD, 5xD – ABS, Cylinder shank holder – 4 real cutting edges/insert – Equal insert in the center- and outer position – 5xD drilling without feed/rev reduction.

KUB Centron® – Diameter range with ABS connection: for 4xD – 9xD: 20 – 81 mm for 5xD – 9xD: 82 – 155 mm for 6xD: 80 – 165 mm – Short process times from high performance parameters

Distributors invited Please contact sarath.nair@kometgroup.com

KOMET Precision Tools India Pvt Ltd. 16J, Attibele Industrial Area Bangalore-562 107 India Tel: +91(0)80-2807 8000 Fax: +91(0)80-2807 8100 www.kometindia.com info@kometindia.com

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Auto Monitor

THE OTHER SIDE

Getting Personal With Dr Andreas Schaaf, President, BMW India If not in auto industry where would you be?

That’s interesting question. The reason why I ended up in the car industry is because I had a great inclination towards design, art and creativity, so I was considering my business career in the advertising agency. But when I got into an advertising agency, I realised that it was too unstructured.

Finally, I went for a university degree and looked for something that excited me from the product and technology point of view. As I come from a family of engineers—both my father and brother are engineers—I was confronted by technical questions and at the same time, I was also keen about engineering, so I ended up joining BMW. I grew up in a BMW as my family used this car since the beginning What car do you drive? What do you dream of driving?

Unfortunately in India, I am not driving but being driven. But whenever I am back in Germany I drive my car. I had driven X1 for a week and I enjoyed it. My dream car in BMW is the six series convertible, as this gives unlimited power and at the same time, smoothness. Also, the interiors, its luxurious look, is impressive Your most recent indulgence….

I think that was sleeping and sleeping for 12 hours without interruption What are you currently reading?

I tell you… I have one son and he is 15 months old and another two-and-ahalf-year-old daughter. I think this answers your question. Reading a book is a luxurious thing for me. Whenever somebody asks me ‘Which book are you reading?’, I start laughing because if somebody can take care of my kids, then I can start reading books. But when on vacation, we drop the kids somewhere, and that’s the time when I can read as many books as possible What is Dr Schaaf is doing when not talking auto?

Spending time with my wife, kids and having good food Outdoor activity you would miss office for…

I think there are couple of things: I love eating, having wine and spending time with my family and friends—especially to spend time with my wife without the kids and enjoying and doing nothing and having wine at a beautiful location

Illustration: Sachin Pandit

Where did you go for your last holiday?

We went to Korea where my previous assignment was. Though it is not a very popular vacation spot, I must say it has been a fantastic experience.

Then we went to Rome; it was great as I love Italy. Korea was also good as we have lots of memories there; both our kids were born there

16 - 30 June 2011

In Person Born in Haan, Germany, Dr Andreas Schaaf chaaf joined Mandatory Military Service in 1989.. He went on to complete Business Administration, tion, University of Bayreuth in 1996. In a couple e of years, he completed his doctoral thesis at the G in University of Bayreuth and joined BMW AG 6. By the product controlling department in 1996. rtfolio 2000, he became the head of product portfolio management and new product concepts in the me domain of central marketing before he became a, head of sales and market development for Asia, as Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe. In 2007, he was rpromoted as the vice president of sales & mare keting. He continued to expand his foray at the e helm of BMW in India and last year, he became president of BMW India.

An experience I won’t forget…

I have a lot of experiences, but the most memorable experience of my life I would say, was my wedding day. Everything was absolutely fantastic and perfect, including the location. I think this is one of those moments when you can be extremely grateful to God for your destiny, for experiencing such a magical moment in life.

You get angry when…

The unprofessional attitude of people. For example we went to Italy and paid Euros 400 per night for a hotel room, but my wife had to wait for 15 minutes to get a cup of coffee. We asked the waiter many times to get the coffee fast but they did not listen. And fi nally my wife had to go on her own to fetch it. When I asked the waiter, he abruptly replied, ‘You don’t see that we are busy!’ This is something which makes me extremely upset What is the one thing you would like to change about you?

That’s really a tough one. I would probably not be able answer this right now Best thing to have happened to you…

Meeting my wife, having kids and a healthy family

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