The country’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturer Tata Motors said on Monday that it is expanding its production capacity of its small truck, Ace, at its Pantnagar facility by 1 lakh units per year from next year.
The company’s president (commercial vehicles) Ravi Pisharody said that Ace has been clocking a growth of almost one-third a year, which would make the company increase its total production to 3.5 lakh units from 2.5 lakh units.
?The Ace family is growing 30-40% a year. We are ramping up Ace’s production capacity at our Pantnagar plant to 4,50,000 units annually. From next year, we will be operating with this capacity,? Pisharody said.
The total investment that the company has been made in this regard is around R80-100 crore.
Apart from the expansion in production of the Ace, the company is also putting up another unit at its Dharwad facility in Karnataka.
The facility would produce other variants of the Ace like the Ace Zip and Magic Iris.
?This plant will go on stream from January. The initial production capacity of the plant will be 90,000 units per annum,? he said.
Meanwhile, Tata Motors on Monday made its foray into the inter-city luxury bus market with the introduction of the Divo.
The luxury bus which is priced at R66 lakh would compete with the Volvo. Pisharody said that the size of the luxury bus market is around 250 units per annum and the company is looking to sell around 150 units during a year.
He also added that the Divo is R15 lakh cheaper than its nearest rival.