Qute will not sabotage three-wheeler industry: Bajaj Auto President

By Rahel Kirinde

Bajaj Auto Ltd. India President Rakesh Sharma stated on Thursday that they have no intention of letting their new quadricycle the ‘Bajaj Qute’ replace three-wheelers as a new commercial alternative.

“The Qute is not an alternative to three wheelers, we are not planning on replacing the three wheeler or even the motor cycle in this case, we are just supplementing it,” said Sharma during a media interview

He noted that Bajaj manufactures 80% of the world three wheeler supply and that if they had any anticipation of it having a negative impact upon the three wheeler industry they would not have selected the quadricycle concept.

“There is a possibility for both expansion and substitution, right now we cannot comprehend what it might be, whether both the quadricycle and the three-wheeler will remain hand in hand or whether one will reign superior to the other will be entirely be decided by what our customers require.”

“In Sri Lanka we have specifically targeted personal users, it might reach a point where the Qute will become a semi commercial vehicle as with the three wheeler where owners will eventually start offering their personal vehicle for hire in their free time,” said Sharma.

Bajaj Auto Ltd. South Asia and Middle East Vice President Manish Singh said, “We’re not planning for the demand for three wheelers to decrease, if we were expecting it at all we would have not launched the Qute, our only expectation for the future is that both the quadricycle and the three-wheeler will remain in the market.” He mentioned that as of now 50 percent of their global customers for the Qute are individuals who previously used motor cycles and not three-wheelers.

“From our perspective we consider the Qute as a personal vehicle; whether it will eventually be used in the taxi industry depends on our customers’ needs.”

“Even if the Qute does ultimately become more popular than the Three-wheeler we will continue to manufacture three-wheelers,” said Singh.

“Our purpose of introducing a quadricycle instead of a car is to meet necessities of the less fortunate section of the society, there are people who dream of owning four wheels but cannot afford it, this is just a simple solution to this problem,” said Sharma. He added that the Qute also addresses to the much larger concerns of today’s world which is the fuel emission of road vehicles leading to extreme environmental pollution.

He said that the Qute only emits 66g of carbon-dioxide per litre of oil making it more environmental friendly than any other road vehicle at present. It is also more fuel efficient than a three wheeler running at 36 km per litre of fuel.

The Bajaj Qute is the first motorised quadricycle to available in Sri Lanka. It runs on a 216.6cc and was introduced for the purpose of intra-city transport to reduce traffic congestion and CO2 emission due to it being small in size and being extremely fuel efficient. It is currently priced at Rs. 975,000 and available for sale in Sri Lanka.

Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe