Daimler Truck Bets Big on India

CHENNAI, India – With expectations India will be the world’s second-largest truck market by 2020, Daimler is investing more than $900 million here to launch a new brand, with eight new models to be built at a greenfield plant capable of producing 36,000 trucks a year.

“The center of gravity in our industry is shifting,” Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche says earlier this month at the opening ceremony for the new Oragadam truck plant near here.

“For more than 100 years, Europe, the U.S. and later Japan were pretty much the only markets that mattered. For over a century, you could be the No.1 truck, car or bus manufacturer without selling a single vehicle here in India. But not anymore.”

The plant and the new BharatBenz brand also illustrates the value of the auto maker’s global strategy of drawing from commonly developed technology to develop trucks for specific markets, Daimler Truck Div. head Andreas Renschler says.

The first four new BharatBenz light-duty trucks draw from Daimler’s Fuso brand, using a modified Fuso Canter cab, engine and chassis. Its initial four heavy-duty models are based on the Mercedes-Benz Axor cab and 6.4L 6-cyl. diesel.

The new plant also draws from the company’s global production experience, combining process and technologies to “set a new production standard at Daimler Trucks,” Renschler says.

Situated on a 400-acre (162-ha) site, the new plant will build both trucks and engines when it begins operation in September. It also includes a full research and development facility, complete with a high-speed test track.

While capacity initially is set at 36,000 trucks a year, it can be expanded to double that number, Renschler says.

The first BharatBenz truck will be a heavy-duty model launched in September, when the brand’s dealership count will have been expanded to 110 points from 70 today.

Plans call for adding two additional models every two months until the plant is producing four light and four medium-duty trucks. By 2014, the new brand will have 17 models ranging from six to 49 tons on sale in India, a spokesperson for Daimler India Commercial Vehicles says.