Tata Motors managing director and CEO Girish Wagh has said the strong uptick in demand for trucks and buses has prompted a strategic revaluation of the company’s manufacturing capacity.
In an interview to Moneycontrol, he said the company is looking at squeezing out incremental volumes from its existing plants through process optimisation and “de-bottlenecking” to keep up with robust demand. Edited excerpts of the interview:
On January 20 you launched a large set of new products in one go. What segment will they cater to?
We launched 17 vehicles in three-four themes. Never have we done this kind of a wide launch before. In the multi-axle segment, we have four tonnage points; 28, 35, 42 and 48 tonne. We have studied the regulations and the kind of maximum loads is allowed per axle, and the how much the road can bear and based on the allowed framework, they have redesigned the suspension of a tandem axle.
What is a tandem axle?
A tandem axle is a combination of two axles in the rear, which distributes the load between the two more evenly and therefore, stay within the road limit. Therefore, there is an increase in the payload by around 1.8 tonne. Likewise, a 28 tonne vehicle will become a 30 tonne vehicle and so on.
How were they different previously?
Not more than six years back, they increased the axle load regulation, where the maximum GVW (gross vehicle weight) of a 5-axle truck used to be 37 tonne and 3718 was the highest selling vehicle. Through this innovation, a four-axle truck will have 37 tonne capacity.
What are the other launches you have planned?
In ILMCV (intermediate, light and medium) segment, we are launching the Azura brand. We are also launching a range of electric trucks in the 9, 12, 19 28, 55 tonne configuration. These trucks will come with our new intelligent, modular, EV architecture, which consists of modular battery packs and in-house battery management system and in-house developed e-axles.
How much has Tata Motors invested in the development of these new products?
We have been saying that we will stay within 2-4 percent of the revenue as the capex. More than half of this is R&D. A good part of the capex has been routed towards electrification, connectivity and autonomous. Its not just the vehicle architecture that has been improved, it’s the powertrain too which can take us right up to 2040 and the new-gen battery electric architecture which can also take us beyond that.
With these new launches and demand uptick, are you looking at capacity creation?
We are not looking at greenfield expansion because we have sufficient space among all our plant. But with some of the migrations that has happened within a segment to a different model, there are specific areas where we are revisiting our capacity and capex requirement. During this year, we have increased the capacity of bus-body building. We are doing it in a selective manner and this is going to be a de-bottlenecking exercise rather than full-fledged capacity greenfield creation.
What is the capacity utilisation rate?
Our Jamshedpur and Lucknow plants' capacity utilisation are upwards of 80-85 percent. Depending on the vehicle, our Pantnagar plant will be around 50-60 percent. At Dharwad, again depending on the vehicle, could be operating at 60-70 percent utilisation and Pune could be at 60-85 percent.
What has been the jump due to the GST cut?
Going by the Vahan data, Q3 over Q2 (FY26) ,the industry has grown by 25.8 percent and our volumes grew by 29.4 percent. Post-GST there are certainly some segments that have started to do well. Car carriers and e-commerce have been doing very well. Steel, cement have done well. Tipper and mining trucks have gone up well. ILCV and heavy have seen very good growth.
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