This company has a track record of doing the seemingly impossible in a quiet and focused manner—its announcement about a game-changing JV with Volvo is one such instance

That Eicher Motors Ltd is once again on a winning streak was best reflected in the way its share prices went up by almost 16% in one day. Historically, this company has a track record of doing the seemingly impossible in a quiet and focused manner, and the recent announcement wherein its joint venture with Volvo is now going to be the global hub for complete manufacture and assembly of truck engines in the 4-8 litre size segment (known as ‘medium’ in the developed countries and ‘large’ in developing countries) was no different. None of the usual song and dance lately associated with any announcement in the automobile world, just a straight forward press conference without alcohol, simply a lot of numbers. So very Swedish, dry, though Peter Karlsten, president of Volvo Powertrain did try to make a joke, which nobody understood.
 
Also present on stage were Siddhartha Lal, managing director & CEO of VE Commercial vehicles, him of the carefully tousled hair and successful track record especially on motorcycles, and Par Ostberg, president, Trucks Asia, Volvo group, and chairman, VE Commercial vehicles—certainly was surprised with the way Asia moved from 7% to 25% of Volvo's global market share. Everybody looked very happy indeed at the announcements, which briefly go like this:- an investment of about Rs3,000 million, an additional production of around 85,000 engines annually for European and Japanese markets in addition to India, Far East and other countries, and everything good for the still distant Euro-6 emission norms.
 
These engines promise to be state-of-the-art and shall go into Volvo vehicles worldwide, as well as in some Eicher VE ones in India, too. Engine life between overhauls is estimated to be around (or more than) one million kilometres. All future low-sulphur diesel requirements will be met. In short, end-to-end manufacture of state-of-the-art engines as well as associated power train elements is now to be done in India, something that was impossible to even dream of a decade or so ago when Volvo Trucks first entered India. There was also some unconfirmed talk on gear-box, hybrids and electronics—but these are cards which they seem to be holding close to their chests.
 
Consider this for a company that made the first totally indigenous tractor in India way back in 1960, took over its German principals in a day and age when such things were unheard of, walked out of its Faridabad factory into the then remote Pithampur in MP when local Haryana politics in the '80s made extremely unreasonable demands, overshadowed its Japanese collaborators when Light Commercial Vehicles were introduced into India in the late 80s, bought over a literally gasping Royal Enfield and turned it around into a global icon . . . the list goes on, to more recently, when they moved into a joint venture with global heavy vehicle leaders, Volvo, in what has come to be known as the benchmark for such collaborative efforts.
 
Is this exciting news from the motoring point of view? Consider this—the engines inside these trucks and buses can do what none of the supercars can do—they can turn the economy around. And this will also force the other heavy vehicle manufacturers into raising the stakes—for the benefit of all concerned.
 
At the beginning of this essay, your correspondent made a comment about a "lot of numbers". In truth, one major emotion was left out of that opening gambit—and that was this—it felt good to see how an Indian company in core automotive technology was now at the forefront and within the heart of heavy vehicle engineering. Worldwide.