Royal Enfield unveils EuroIII-compliant engine

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After five years of research and development, Royal Enfield, a unit of Eicher Motors, unveiled a new engine platform called the Unit Construction Engine (UCE) on Wednesday. To be available in 350cc and 500cc models, the new platform will replace the Lean Burn Engine, which was till date used in the Thunderbird and apart from its traditional counterpart used in Bullet.

The new engine made its debut on Wednesday in the Thunderbird Twinspark 350cc, that will be sold only in the domestic market at Rs 1,00,003 (ex-showroom, Chennai). This is slightly higher than the cost of the old Thunderbird (Rs 99,000), after the state government increased the road tax by Rs 4,000.

The 500cc variant, which is Euro III compliant and has electronic fuel injection (EFI) technology, has been fitted in the Bullet Electra and would be exported to countries in US, Japan, UK and Europe.

"The company has earmarked an investment of Rs 25 crore till 2010-11. A major part of the amount has been spent in developing the new engine as well as the new Thunderbird," said Siddhartha Lal, managing director, Eicher Motors. Lal added that more models would be launched with the expansion of capacity at its plant in Thiruvottiyur.

"Royal Enfield has four new products in the pipeline, including the new Thunderbird which was launched today. This will be followed by the launch of UCE 500 EFI in November at the auto shows in Cologne and Birmingham," said RL Ravichandran, CEO, Royal Enfield.

According to Lal, the company will scale up production capacity of its plant at Chennai from 40,000 units a year to 60,000 units, till 2010. Royal Enfield, which has the Bullet 350, Bullet Electra, Bullet Electra 5S, Bullet Machismo and now the Thunderbird Twinspark in its stable, sold 39,000 units in 2007-08.

However, with the growing demand for leisure bikes, the company is expecting to register a growth of 15% - 20% (or at 45,000 units) in 2008-09 . Even its exports, 95% of which are traditional 500cc Bullets, is expected to grow by 15% in 2008-09 from 2,006 units in 2007-08.