The strong pickup in mining, road building, e-commerce, and infrastructure development has led to a ‘stock out’ situation at Volvo Trucks India, a premium commercial vehicle manufacturer, despite each of its trucks costing more than Rs 1 crore.
A senior official at VE Commercial Vehicle, the Eicher Group company that controls Volvo Trucks India, said that with a positive economic outlook for the rest of the year and continued uptick in infrastructure development, demand for heavy-duty trucks is expected to remain upbeat.
“We sell 1,100 trucks a year and each of our trucks costs more than Rs 1 crore. Our order book is full for the next 2-3 months. The premium market is not very large but it is growing.
We have more than 85 percent market share in this segment. We expect demand for such premium trucks to keep increasing,” said Vinod Aggarwal, Managing Director, and CEO, VE Commercial Vehicles.
Volvo Trucks & Buses have seen 140 percent growth in sales during the April-August period to 369 units as against 154 units sold in the same period last year. The current demand for the company’s products has already reached pre-COVID levels.
While Volvo clocked sales of 1,107 units in FY20, at the current pace, it would touch 1,300 by the end of FY22.
The slowdown and the pandemic pushed commercial vehicle sales to their lowest level in 11 years in FY21 to 5.68 lakh units. However, medium and heavy truck sales, between January and July this year, have already surpassed the volumes of the entire 2020 and are expected to close at almost double the sales volume compared to last year.
Launches six models
To cash in on the surge in demand, Volvo Trucks has launched six models in India, catering to mining, road construction and infrastructure projects, e-commerce, and over-dimensional cargo transportation.
Volvo Trucks claims that the cab volume of the newly launched models has been increased by up to 1,000 litres. The Volvo FMX500 gets an additional passenger corner camera and provision for four more cameras for enhanced visibility.
The driver’s console now has a completely new interface for information and communication. The 12-inch driver interface displays the performance and maintenance parameters of the truck, like pre-trip check and intuitive traction display.
Select variants offer a supplementary 9-inch touch screen display for infotainment, phone connectivity, driver guide, real-time driver behaviour, mapping, transport information, and camera monitoring.
