Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India private limited (HMSI) has announced that the company will commence manufacturing its sports motorcycle, ‘CBR-650’ locally from next year. Confirming the news, HMSI Vice President Y S Guleria said that the company will start production of its high end bike, CBR-650 in India from 2015. The company is also building a manufacturing plant at Vithalapur in Ahmedabad, other than this upcoming facility, the company currently owns three production units in Haryana, Rajasthan and Karnataka. However, Honda has yet not specified as to at which facility will it manufacture CBR-650. The upcoming plant at Vithalpur, Ahmedabad is unlikely to have a very high volume manufacturing capacity.
On the price front, we expect that local manufacturing will allow the auto maker to price it competitively; however the company has yet not taken any decision on that. The decision of manufacturing the sportsbike in India has come after the ‘Make in India’ campaign started by PM. CBR-650 is a 649 cc sports bike that gets power from a four cylinder engine equipped with double overhead camshaft technology, matched to a six-speed transmission.
