UML, the joint venture between Lohia Auto Industries of India and UM Motorcycles of the United States of America, has now confirmed that it will roll out middle-range cruiser bikes by the middle of 2015. There has been an official statement released by the top authorities in this aspect. It said, “The cruiser bikes to be launched will have engine capacities in the range of 300cc to 500cc as against the 200cc to 230cc that were 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.”
The two major companies had signed a joint venture on September 27th, 2014 and had decided to market an entirely new range of motorcycles in India. As per the JV, both the companies have a 50-50 share agreement on UML. The initial commitment was of an investment of 120 crores INR in the project over an indefinite period. UML has plans to utilise the facility of Lohia Auto Industries located in Kashipur in Uttarakhand. This was done for getting the local operations started. In a matter of time, the mentioned facility is expected to have a manufacturing capacity of over 100000 units. Incidentally, the company had displayed some of their models at the Delhi Auto Expo 2014 to gauge and calculate the people’s response. The response from the enthusiasts were quite good as witnessed from the event and UML will definitely set the balls rolling once it has completed the groundwork.
