UML to roll out 300cc-500cc cruisers in Q2 CY2015

UML, a 50-50 JV between American bikemaker UM Motorcycles and Lohia Auto Industries, is planning to roll out mid-segment (300cc to 500cc) cruisers by Q2 CY2015. In an official communication today, the company release stated that “the cruiser bikes to be launched will have engine capacities in the range of 300cc to 500cc as against the 200cc to 230cc that was announced previously. The company plans to start with about 50 dealers in the first phase in the first year (CY2015), which will mostly cover all metro cities.”

On September 27, the two companies had signed an equal joint venture to develop and market an entirely new range of motorcycles in India. The two companies had committed to make investments worth Rs 120 crore into the project over a definite period. The new entity had announced that they would use Lohia Auto’s current facility located at Kashipur, Uttarakhand for local operations. The said facility is said to have an annual manufacturing capacity of 100,000 units.

It can be recalled that closely following the developments, Autocar Professional had broken the story about UM Motorcycles scouting for a local JV partner in India in February earlier this year. Rajeev Mishra, director, UM Motorcycles India had told Autocar Professional then that “to achieve cost competitiveness in the market, we plan to locally manufacture our bikes. We will soon announce the name of our JV partner, which will execute the manufacturing operations while we will handle all other areas. However, setting up such as facility will take time and we expect to begin our local manufacturing by April 2015.”

The company had displayed a few of their motorcycles at the Auto Expo 2014 to gauge the visitor’s response at the event.