Daimler Opens Truck Manufacturing Plant in India

CHENNAI, India — Daimler A.G. officially opened its sprawling truck manufacturing plant here Wednesday to produce vehicles for its newest brand, BharatBenz, as the company looks to gain entry into India’s domestic market, the world’s fastest growing for trucks and buses.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks — based on vehicles Daimler sells in Turkey and Japan — are expected to roll off the assembly lines here by the fall. For now, all of the trucks will be sold in India, as Daimler, the world’s largest producer of commercial vehicles, looks to break into a market that is already the world’s third largest.

Andreas Renschler, the head of Daimler Trucks worldwide, called the new venture “the ideal combination of German DNA and Indian engineering.”

Engineers here redesigned the Canter medium-duty model that Daimler’s Fuso subsidiary sells in Japan as the basis for its lighter vehicles, while the Axor, which Daimler sells in Turkey, was the base model for the heavy-duty trucks to be manufactured here.