Triton Electric Vehicle has bought the AMW Gujarat facility at an approximate valuation of INR 600 crore. Himanshu Patel, Founder & CEO, Triton Electric Vehicle, confirmed the development in an interaction with the Mobility Outlook team.
'Manufacturing at the plant will start in July 2022. Triton Electric will roll out the first electric truck somewhere in October this year. We have plans to diversify and manufacture all form factors of electric and hydrogen mobility, but the focus, for the time being, is going to be on electric trucks,' he said.
Spread over 3.7 million square feet in Bhuj, Gujarat, Triton EV will make the payment to the AMW lenders in two instalments. The first of these, as per Patel, will be INR 210 crore, and the second will be the remaining INR 390 crore. AMW lenders led by IDBI Bank and Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) are said to have approved Triton EV's plans of buying the facility by a near-absolute majority (>99%).
Team Triton EV plans to utilise the existing equipment to manufacture trucks and has plans to add new equipment to cover the battery and motor aspects of the electric trucks. Patel explained that the new equipment will be installed in the plant within three to four weeks from now, and the facility will be commissioned to manufacture electric trucks after that.
The USA-headquartered company is clear that it won't be importing anything from China. Mobility Outlook had previously reported that the company, in collaboration with Bharat Electronics Limited and a few other names, is already busy setting up an end-to-end electric vehicle manufacturing hub in Gujarat. Triton EV, as a matter of fact, has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding for EV manufacturing with the Government of Gujarat.
'Testing of the facility will start probably around June 2022, and the first deliveries will commence around September-October 2022,' said Patel. Earlier, he said that Triton EV was sitting on an order book for 27,000 trucks. It may be recalled that Triton had first showcased an 18-wheeler electric truck in October 2020.
Electric powertrains will drive the first sets of trucks produced by Triton EV. Patel claims that these trucks will come with Hydrogen ready features giving the owners the flexibility to drive these on Hydrogen or electric power. The Government of India has been pushing both Hydrogen and Electric as the new fuels powering modern day mobility.
'Triton trucks will be primarily powered by electric drive trains but these will be Hydrogen ready as well. It will be easier for us to adapt these trucks to hydrogen when we launch hydrogen powered trucks in the future,' Patel informed.
The total investment going behind the 'electric vehicle manufacturing hub' in Gujarat, as pointed out by Patel, will be north of INR 10,000 crore. Triton EV will be focusing on manufacturing electric three-wheelers sometime after electric trucks' manufacturing starts at its Gujarat plant. The company also plans to manufacture electric forms of all types of commercial vehicles.
'We have a couple of buildings lying vacant at the Gujarat facility and we plan to use these for manufacturing electric 3Ws, 4Ws and possibly 2Ws as well. The plan has been spread out in five phases and the phase after electric trucks manufacturing will be focusing on electric three wheelers,' said Patel.
Triton is working on introducing electric trucks with a capacity starting from 2.5 tonne in India. While the country is known as one of the biggest e3W markets globally, there are barely any electric trucks plying on Indian roads.