May 15, 2014: The small commercial vehicle market which is pegged at 3.59 lakh units a year and expected to grow to 5.40 lakh units by 2019 according to Frost & Sullivan study is going to witness a new entrant. VE Commercial Vehicle, a joint venture between Eicher Ltd. and Volvo is looking forward to enter the small commercial vehicle segment with mini truck and they have already started exploring the possibility of the same.
The small commercial vehicle segment is at presently dominated by bigger players like Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors and in the recent years has seen a jump in the sales because of the evolution of a model wherein big trucks for highways and mini trucks for dispatches in cities. This hub and spoke model has resulted in the small commercial vehicle garnering a share of 56 per cent of the overall commercial vehicle market in fiscal 2014.
As of now VE doesn’t have any vehicle in the sub 5 tonne category and has only trucks with gross vehicle weight of 5 to 49 tonnes. VE which is planning to launch vehicles in the small commercial vehicle segment according to sources would be launching one-tonne and three-tonne vehicles by 2016-17. Earlier Eicher had attempted to enter the SCV space and conducted market study in 1996-97 and 2003-04 but had not launched any vehicle.
