Hino Motors Japan to source auto components from India

Venkatachari Jagannathan
29 April 2003

Says Hino Motors senior managing director Takeshi Iida: "Sourcing from India depends on price and quality."

Currently Hino Motors does not buy anything from India. And the only company it has business relationship in India is Ashok Leyland, the city-based commercial vehicles manufacturer, to which it supplies the 4- and 6-litre diesel engine technology. It is also rumoured that Hino Motors might source these engines and components from Ashok Leyland.

Iida and his team are on a brief visit to India to ink the Hino J-series high-power diesel and compressed natural gas (CNG) engine technology transfer agreement with Ashok Leyland for an unspecified know-how and royalty fee.

The new agreement, signed on 28 April 2003, further strengthens the 18-year-old business bond between the two companies. The Indian company has upgraded the same to Euro 2 emission standards. "There are around 1.25 lakh Ashok Leyland vehicles plying with Hino engines," says Ashok Leyland managing director R Seshasayee.

As per the agreement Ashok Leyland can manufacture the 260HP, 8-litre Euro 2 and Euro 3 diesel engines, and this takes the company a step further in its attempt to convert to a single-engine platform.

Ashok Leyland will fit the new J-series engines in articulated tractors (44 tonnes), inter-city long-distance buses and tippers. Pilot production of vehicles fitted with these engines will start this fiscal while commercialisation will happen during the second quarter of the next year.