Daimler India Commercial Vehicle Pvt. Ltd. (DICV), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler AG, has started exporting bus chassis from India. Hartmut Schick, Head of Daimler Buses, and Markus Villinger, Head of Daimler Buses India, were present at the Egyptian capital of Cairo to celebrate delivery of the first bus chassis to the company’s business partner MCV. The products in question are nine-ton bus chassis that MCV will equip with bodies in Cairo. The finished vehicles will soon be sold as Mercedes-Benz-brand buses through MCV’s nationwide sales network.
“The export of bus chassis from India to Egypt is yet another demonstration of how we are successfully leveraging on our global presence,” said Hartmut Sc
hick while delivering the chassis. “Our global production network enables us to offer competitive products for every market.”
To this, Karim Ghabbour, Founder & Managing Director, MCV, added: “We’re convinced that the chassis from India will ensure our buses’ high quality and at the same time help expand our product range with a high-performance vehicle that will be offered on attractive terms.”
Competitive, high-quality products
The OF 9t bus chassis with front-mounted engines are manufactured at the DICV plant in Chennai and delivered from there to Egypt. They are rolled out of the same assembly line as that of BharatBenz trucks, as they are technologically similar to the medium-duty BharatBenz trucks. As a result, Daimler was able to begin with exports before the bus plant work is completed at the Oragadam site.
The chassis from India are specially designed for use in buses. They are competitive, high-quality products, with a high degree of localization backed with advanced production and logistics processes. This enables Daimler Buses to offer vehicles in the as yet unexplored segments of the Egyptian bus market. The company sales network will cover the additional export markets in due course.
Oragadam plant work apace
Meanwhile, construction of the DICV bus plant at Oragadam is continuing at a rapid pace. Daimler, which is investing around €50 million in the project launched in March 2014, expects to begin producing Mercedes-Benz and BharatBenz buses at the plant by the end of the second quarter.
Spread across an area of 113,000 sq. metres, the plant is being built within the existing DICV premises. The plant will initially have an annual installed capacity of 1,500 vehicles, which can be expanded to 4,000 units subsequently. Once construction is completed, the Oragadam facility will be the first Daimler plant worldwide to produce trucks, buses and engines for a total of three brands.