TVS Motor Company Joint Managing Director M Sudarshan Venu announced on December 15 that the brand will be extending its partnership with BMW Motorrad to co-develop “new platforms and future technologies”, chiefly electric vehicles. According to TVS Motor, the brand will be tasked with “designing and developing future BMW Motorrad products and delivering world-class quality, supply chain management”, among other things.
The two brands entered a long-term strategic partnership in 2013 with the aim of manufacturing entry-level performance motorcycles in the sub-500cc category. The BMW G310 R and its ADV counterpart - the 310 GS - were the first two products to emerge from this partnership. The powertrain was shared with the TVS Apache RR310, a fully-faired entry-level performance motorcycle, which consistently outsold its BMW-badged counterpart due to its lower pricing.
While the two BMW products failed to make an impact on the market, the partnership has been sustained with a new-found focus on electric mobility.
According to CNBC TV18, the development comes days after TVS Motor informed the stock exchanges about the incorporation of TVS Electric Mobility Limited on December 13. The article also stated that TVS had entered into a strategic partnership with Tata Power to set up electric charging infrastructure across the country. While details regarding the upcoming products remain unclear, TVS Motor has stated that the first product of their renewed partnership will be showcased in the next 24 months.
BMW Motorrad and TVS Motor will develop common platforms by “mutually tapping the emerging technologies in the future mobility space”, presumably electric two-wheelers. TVS has stated that it will do so keeping in mind the global requirements of customer segments in various markets. While TVS Motor, India’s third-largest two-wheeler maker by volume, has a strong presence in developing markets like Latin America, South Asia, Middle East and Africa, BMW Motorrad is known for producing some of the most high-end performance bikes in the world ranging from litre-class superbikes to off-road ADV bikes retailing between Rs 16-22 lakh (ex-showroom) in India.
TVS Motor is the latest in a series of legacy two-wheeler manufacturers in India who have entered the EV space in recent times, after Honda Motorcycle and Scooters India announced their plan to introduce an electric scooter in the next financial year. The brand has already begun doing feasibility runs with its dealer network in India.
While TVS has already introduced an electric scooter with the iQube, its partnership with BMW Motorrad will likely lead to the development of electric motorcycles, a segment that’s trailing behind scooters in the EV space, largely due to the lopsided power-to-weight balance that e-motorcycles have been unable to crack, globally. The presence of a large battery pack appears to be the only way to extract greater performance, but adds to the overall weight of the bike, while high performance, a growing requirement from India’s evolving motorcycle consumer, reduces range. Other legacy players like Hero Motocorp have invested heavily into burgeoning e-scooter makers like Ather Energy.
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