Yamaha, Suzuki And Ather Commence Two-wheeler Production Amid COVID-19 Lockdown 4.0

The bikemakers are taking a step-by-step approach towards resuming normal operations

• Fifty per cent of Yamaha and Suzuki dealerships across India have been reopened. 
• Yamaha’s Kancheepuram factory and head office reopened; Surajpur and Faridabad facilities to open soon
• Suzuki has reopened its Gurugram production facility. 
• Ather has commenced operations at its factory and experience centres in Bangalore and Chennai.

Japanese bikemakers Suzuki and Yamaha and Indian startup Ather Energy have restarted production at their facilities across India. This step has been taken after receiving approval from relevant government authorities and with proper safety procedures in place. Other bikemakers like Piaggio, Royal Enfield, TVS and Hero MotoCorp have also commenced production at their factories. While Suzuki has started production at its Gurugram facility, Yamaha has begun operations at its head office and its Kancheepuram factory. It is in talks with local authorities to restart production at its Surajpur (Uttar Pradesh) and Faridabad (Haryana) facility. Ather Energy meanwhile has restarted its factory, R&D centre and experience centres in Bangalore and Chennai. 

Like all major bikemakers, Suzuki and Yamaha are following various safety protocols including health monitoring, social distancing and proper hygiene. Yamaha has asked its staff working at critical levels to report to duty first and get in more workforce later. It has started frequent sanitation of the workplace, virtual meetings, and alternate seating arrangements to maintain social distancing. It has also introduced staggered canteen timings for the staff. Suzuki has employed a similar approach and has even installed a disinfectant chamber at the entrances for sanitisation of the workforce. Ather's experience centres will be open for limited hours and will allow only a limited number of customers per day. Deliveries of Ather 450 scooters have commenced as well but in limited numbers. The bikemaker though says that its plans of launching the Ather 450X in 8 cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Kochi, Ahmedabad and Kolkata this year remains unchanged. 

Ravneet Phokela, Chief Business Officer, Ather Energy said “We are slowly opening up our retail stores and offices and are hoping that some semblance of normalcy will be achieved in the coming months. We have a lot of work ahead of us to expand pan-India over the coming months, and thankfully, the lockdown has not affected those timelines dramatically. We are now working on a slightly revised timeline of Q4 of 2020 to begin deliveries of the Ather 450X across India.”

Other than restarting production at its factories, major bikemakers have also reopened dealerships at most locations. Yamaha and Suzuki have commenced operations of 50 per cent of its dealerships across India. In fact, owing to some Suzuki dealerships across India have already sold 5,000 two-wheelers and serviced around 50,000 units in May itself. 

In other news, the past few weeks have seen almost all bikemakers hike the prices for their BS6 lineups.