Road Rage

Agarishly coloured golf buggy? An autorickshaw with delusions of grandeur?

A Nano with random design tweaks? A car from Toy Story or some other animated film?

When Bajaj Auto unveiled its quadricycle at the Delhi Auto Expo in 2012, the chatter among the ‘autorati’ was largely about its unusual looks and the difficulty in defining exactly what this 216-cced 400 kg contraption was.

Today, 18 months later, as the company awaits the goahead to commercially launch the RE60, the debate is entirely about what it means for the Indian roads. Is it safe? Is it overly polluting? Is it desirable at all?

Car enthusiasts may have reacted in a lukewarm fashion towards the RE60, but the Bajaj Auto product has created a deep schism within the auto industry. Karl Slym, Managing Director of Tata Motors, is convinced that the quadricycle is a bad idea in a country that tops the world list in road deaths.

FRAUGHT WITH DANGER

“It will take India only backwards, not forwards. In my view, it is generally against all the progressive norms that the manufacturers, the Government and agencies have been working on over the years and continue to do so,” he told this newspaper.

Slym believes that any move to give the green signal to quadricycles is fraught with the danger of not improving, but actually deteriorating, road safety and pollution in the country. Venu Srinivasan Chairman of TVS Motor, agrees with this view and says the quadricycle should meet the safety standards of the Nano.

“The Nano has set benchmarks for safety and emissions in low-cost cars. There is no reason to dilute standards and produce a cheap and unsafe vehicle that can endanger lives on roads,” he says.

TVS Motor was actually the first to suggest this product concept over a decade ago. According to Srinivasan, he faced opposition from Maruti and (ironically) Bajaj Auto for reasons of safety. There was perhaps no benchmark for safety then but the Nano has changed all that, he says.

The Nano is a 624 cc twocylinder car which weighs 600 kg compared to the digital twin spark 200 cc RE60 which weighs 400 kg. The Nano assures mileage of 23 kmpl in ideal driving conditions while this is 35 kmpl in the case of the RE60.

Last fortnight, Slym tweeted that the quadricycle concept was regressive and would only take the country backwards, prompting a sharp reaction from Rajiv Bajaj. For the moment, the entire issue seems a full-blown war between Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto with TVS Motor also opposed to the RE60. Indications are that Maruti is not too enthusiastic either and would much rather that this product is confined to the taxi segment as it could directly compete with its compact car range.

Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, says he is befuddled by the safety concerns on the RE60. “How a four-wheeler can be considered unsafe beats me when you acknowledge the presence of two- and three-wheelers on the road,” he says.

RESTRICTED POWER

Likewise, on the issue of emissions, Bajaj reiterates that the RE60 scores over cars on fuel economy and emissions. With restricted power and torque and speed confined to 70 kmph, he argues that RE60 should be subject to a frontal crash requirement test of 30 kmph (and not 50 kmph which is the norm for cars).

“Let the European standards apply to the RE60 and we are ready for the test,” Bajaj has repeatedly said, driving home the point that cars are a different play compared to this “puny thing”.

At a recent press meet in Pune, he said the RE60 was a safer option for two-and three-wheeler users but “it is clearly not for the car buyer”.

He went on to add that the vehicle should be kept off highways/expressways.

At the end of the day, Bajaj reiterated, the RE60 is meant to upgrade autorickshaw users to a safer four-wheeler and is essentially an intra-city vehicle.

It is the “urban transport solution” which assures greater safety and stability.

As a result, it is very unlikely that the RE60 will find takers in the personal buying segment even though its manufacturer disagrees with opponents who believe it should be confined to the taxi space.

Support for the RE60 has not been vocal but the industry grapevine suggests that Mahindra & Mahindra, Piaggio and Eicher are backing the concept since they are confident of launching similar products in the market.

Yet, some of them would like to see the RE60’s debut delayed since it will give them time to ready their own offerings. This is not something that Bajaj takes to kindly. As he told Business Line recently,

“Does that mean we have to wait till then? Are you incentivising innovation?”

It is now up to the committee headed by Dinesh Tyagi, Director of the International Centre for Automotive Technology, to frame an appropriate policy. Reports have been doing the rounds that players like Tata Motors want the weight limit raised from 450 kg to 700 kg. Other manufacturers do not support this move as a heavier vehicle will defeat the very purpose of clean emissions.

There is also concern within industry circles that the RE60 will virtually walk away with the taxi market since it is expected to be priced at a little over Rs 1.5 lakh. Compare this to the Tata Magic, now a popular taxi in many parts of the country, which costs twice as much, and the fears are perhaps justified.

Bajaj, however, rubbishes any possibility of such cannibalisation in the taxi segment. “To me, it is absurd comparing the Magic to the RE60 and concluding that a lower price will make the difference in attracting customers. Both vehicles have different user profiles, apart from the basic difference that the Magic can accommodate eight people compared to four in the RE60. Finally it is about horses for courses.”

He admits, however, that the quadricycle saga could have been solved more amicably had the people involved (Tata, Bajaj, Maruti, etc.) sat across the table and discussed the issue at length.

“At one level, it is a failure of communication. People like me see it as a three-wheeler, while the car guys see it as a car. The bottomline is that people see something new and try to slot it with something familiar to them.”

He draws an analogy to Piaggio’s MP3 scooter which entered the European market seven years ago. It has two wheels in front and one behind which ensures stability when waiting at a traffic signal or when going over a speed-breaker.

The MP3 proved to be very popular in Europe and a product which the market acknowledged.

Now, if Piaggio were to bring it to India, they will fit it in a slot they are familiar with. “However, the two and three-wheeler guys could see it differently and seek different compliance norms,” Bajaj says.

MARKETING INNOVATION

The RE60, according to him, is more of a marketing, rather than technical, innovation and he quotes Isaac Newton to drive home the raison d’etre for this product.

“Your solution has to be new only in the context of the problem that you are solving.” In this case, it is all about offering customers the option to move from the autorickshaw to the RE60.

It may seem odd today but this Bajaj product was touted as the challenger to the Tata Nano five years ago. It was then better known as the ULC, or ultra low-cost car, to be jointly developed with Renault Nissan. The goal was to price the car at Rs 1.5 lakh.

Bajaj Auto actually displayed a concept car at the 2008 Auto Expo, perhaps to deflect some attention from the Nano which was the showstopper of the event. Its MD soon realised that it was more prudent for his company to steer clear of the low pricing space.

As he and his team set about “working with the mindset of a motorcycle”, the priority for this product changed to mileage. “The ULC was intended to be the cheapest car but that is precisely what I did not want,” says Bajaj. In 2009, the partners announced that the ULC project would be handled by Bajaj Auto while Renault-Nissan would cater to its branding and distribution in different markets.

There was not even a remote possibility of a peek-a-boo thereafter with the Indian two-wheeler company keeping its cards close to its chest. All that Bajaj would say was that a four-wheeler was on the anvil and even Renault-Nissan admitted that it had little clue about what was going on.

When the covers came off at the 2012 Auto Expo, the RE60 came as a bit of an anticlimax to those expecting to see a car. For a vehicle that was still being spoken of as a potential rival to the Nano, one look at it dispelled any such notion. Renault-Nissan had little to say either, perhaps because this was not something it had bargained for. It was crystal clear that the RE60 had not set the Auto Expo afire but this was of little consequence to Bajaj.

PREMIUM AND EXPENSIVE

“From my point of view, the RE60 is the most expensive three-wheeler. In terms of marketing strategy, I knew the cheapest car will not work as people want something premium and expensive,” he told Business Line.

The quadricycle concept is, of course, familiar in Europe where its India opponents say sales have been falling rapidly by the year. They also refer to the European Transport Safety Council (the apex body of safety regulations in Europe), which warned some years ago that fatality risk in this product was over 10 times higher than cars.

The supporters of the quadricycle (for India) retort that one cannot compare apples and oranges. And the debate rages on.

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