Honda Motorcycle and Scooters India (HMSI) launched Navi, a new kind of two-wheeler that uses the best attributes of a motorcycle and a scooter at Auto Expo 2016. Though there were doubts on the reception of the new idea, Navi has received overwhelming response in the country. Buoyed by the reaction and sales, HMSI is now planning to double Navi's production from current 50,000 units per annum to nearly one lakh.
"We have been really surprised by the humongous response to the Navi. It's really exceeded our expectations. We have, therefore, decided to almost double our capacity to 90,000 to 1 lakh units soon," Yadvinder Singh Guleria, Senior Vice-President for Sales and Marketing at HMSI told PTI.
Honda rolled out Navi commercially in April and it has been cloaking well beyond the expected 2,000 units per month sales. Priced at Rs 39,648 (ex-showroom Delhi), Navi is the first product to be conceived, designed, developed and validated in India by Honda's R&D.
The decision to ramp up production also comes after Honda started to export Navi. HMSI started exports of Navi to Nepal in October and plans to send vehicles to other SAARC nations.
"Last month alone we shipped as many as 500 units to the Himalayan nation," Guleria said, adding, "going forward, the company may look at exporting the bike to other Saarc markets like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well."
Offered in three variants — Street, Adventure and Off-road — Navi comes in five colour options — red, green, white, orange and black. Navi is powered by a 109cc four-stroke SI engine that also does duty in Activa. The mill churns out 7.83bhp of power at 7,000rpm and 8.96Nm of peak torque at 5,500Nm.
Honda Navi measures 1,805mm in length, 748mm in width, 1,039mm in height, and has a wheelbase of 1,286mm. It has a kerb weight of 101 kgs and a fuel tank of 3.8 litres.
