MALAYSIAN LOW-FLOOR BUSES FOR INDIA
The Scomi Group of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a globally operating provider of urban transit systems, is currently working on the first Indian monorail in Mumbai, but has plans to add the construction of low-floor buses for the local market to its activities.
Scomi already announced at an earlier stage plans to set up a plant in India, but put them on ice during the fulfilment of the Mumbai monorail contract in partnership with the local Indian company Larsen & Toubro. The current plans are to invest this year in this plant, use it to build the coaches for the Mumbai monorail, and add to it the production of low-floor citybuses. According to reports in the Indian press Kanesan Velupilla, president of Scomi International, has confirmed to be in talks with Indian partners about this bus-building project, among them Ispat. If the plans ar realized, Scomi would be the fifth competitor in the low-floor bus segment on the Indian market.
Kanesan said the company plans to make low-floor inter-city buses that run on compressed natural gas, which is a requirement nowadays of many Indian tenders.
"We will source the engine and chassis globally," he added. "The Mumbai monorail project creates an entry for us to bring in the buses as it is a part of a complementary business model for Scomi, and both are urban transportation modes."
Buses and coaches are being built by Scomi Coach, formerly known as MTrans Bus, which was acquired in 2006 by Scomi. It has experience fabricating bus coaches, one of its proud samples being a doubledecker luxury bus on a China-made chassis and engine. Scomi's new line of buses feature a locally designed body, coupled to a re-engineered truck chassis from China.
The seven-metre Scomi bus has a HeFei Axle chassis and a 4,087cc turbocharged diesel engine from Yangzhou Diesel Company. The eight-metre bus has a chassis from Hangzhou Sanhua and the 5,202cc turbocharged diesel engine is from Yuchai Machinery, with some inputs from USA Ford Technical.
The biggest is the 12-metre bus running on a DongFeng DANA platform and powered by a 8,424cc 6-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine developed by YuChai Machinery. All diesel engines come with an intercooler and surpass Euro- 2 standards. Besides, Scomi assembles NGV buses and hybrid buses.
The company assembles its buses in a plant in Rawang, with a capacity of 500 units a year.
