Hino trucks to come to India by mid-2009

The Hino 500 Series medium-duty truck is likely to be available in India by June this year


According to a report on Bloomberg, Hino Motors, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Company, will soon be setting up operations in India. A commercial vehicles manufacturer, Hino will be importing some of its bestselling trucks from its plant in Thailand, and sell these in India as CBUs.

Hino Motors would be entering the Indian market via a joint-venture with the Marubeni Corporation, and the company will be named Hino Motors Sales India Pvt. Ltd., with Hino and Marubeni holding 65 percent and 35 percent respectively.

The first Hino trucks to come to India would be its 500 Series, which will be available in various configurations for different off-road and on-road applications. Hino’s 500 Series truck for India will be fitted with a six-cylinder engine that makes up to 250bhp, and this engine would be mated to a five-speed manual gearbox.

While Hino trucks will be imported to India from Thailand, these will be fitted with India-spec wheels, tyres and suspension in order to deal with the local road conditions. The engines would be Euro IV compliant and fuel efficiency is likely to be better than other existing trucks in India.

Headquartered in Mumbai, Hino India will aim at selling at about 2,000 trucks in its first year of operations, and the company will soon start the process of establishing dealerships throughout the country. Hino vehicles are likely to go on sale in India by June 2009.

Depending on the response its gets for its 500 Series, Hino may later decide to also get its 300 Series and 700 Series trucks to India, followed by its luxury buses. The company may also set up an assembly unit in the country if demand warrants.
Source:http://www.indiaautomotive.net/2008/09/hino-trucks-to-come-to-india-by-mid.html

This is a very good gesture by Hino. In India, only Tata and Swaraj trucks have ruled. Most of them have become old and are not road worthy anymore. Plus they are slow, do not meet emission standards and are not equipped with safety and convenience features. So many brands like Hino, Mercedes and others will only add to variety and will encourage people to buy more advanced trucks and will give the market more options.

GOOD LUCK HINO!!!

Yeah these trucks will be powerful, fuel efficient, more reliable as well as ready for E IV norms

i heard abuout this long back, maybe last year.. but till now no updates on this one

But will they be able to beat the Indigenous companies in the pricing.
Companies like Tata, ashok leyland.
the pricing will be very important as this segment is not like the car market where you can charge a premium for a good product.

napster wrote:i heard abuout this long back, maybe last year.. but till now no updates on this one

Yeah it is a quite old news. I think recession is further delaying up its launch.

hey CC, its a truck and i dont think recession will effect its launch,

napster wrote:hey CC, its a truck and i dont think recession will effect its launch,

FYI, Indian truck market is badly hit by recession. Sales of trucks has come down drastically. Have even read news of companies cutting-down production. So how can we expect foreign players to enter with this scenario?

i dont understand why recession effects truck sales, recession is for the IT industry and why is that effecting the transport industry? though it effects few , but not as much as it shuts down the prodution of trucks

seems this step was taken looking at merc lauching their commercial vehicles in indian market, good to see other companies taking intrest, though market has slowed down in this period but whats good to see is that even commercial market will have options of better quality.