Royal Enfield is going on the product offensive with a string of new products planned for the next three to four years, the company’s CEO Vinod Dasari revealed in online interaction in Freewheeling with SVP. According to Dasari, Royal Enfield’s product development team has been hard at work over the last few years to significantly accelerate Royal Enfield’s product plan. With new platforms, and models and variants under each platform, Royal Enfield intends to launch a new motorcycle every quarter for the next 3-4 years, Dasari revealed.
The Royal Enfield Meteor 350 will employ the new 350 cc platform, with a new engine and new double-cradle frame
“One of the things that we’ve done over the last 3-4 years is to significantly accelerate new product plans. We will remain a mid-sized company, that’s somewhere between 250 and 750 cc. In this range, there are five levels that we’re looking at. The first is a platform. We have a new platform coming up. We would have launched it by now, we will launch it some time, as soon as the lockdown is over. So we have the platforms, and under the platforms, we have the models, within each model we have variants, within each variant we have several color trims and graphics, and then we have the limited editions.
“So five levels, we’re so excited that, to a point, every quarter, for the next three to four years, every quarter, we have a new model. It’s not just changing the colors or something, it will be almost a new model, or a variant, coming for the next three to four years,” Dasari said.
The Royal Enfield Hunter is expected to be the second new model based on the same 350 cc platform
Royal Enfield is already getting ready to launch an all-new 350 cc platform, which will debut in June 2020 with the new Royal Enfield Meteor 350. The new platform will employ a new 350 cc engine with significant performance and refinement than the existing UCE 350 engine, Dasari said, adding that the new platform will be a modular infrastructure, with the same engine, same gearbox and same frame, but will support several new models and variants.
The new 350 cc engine is likely to replace Royal Enfield’s traditional pushrod architecture with overhead cams, and also use counterbalancers. While the CEO of Royal Enfield did not disclose any technical details about the new engine, we have reason to believe that it will be almost like a downsized version of the 650 cc parallel-twin engine, with a slick-shifting six-speed gearbox, and will be free-revving with smooth and refined performance. More details are expected when the new Meteor 350 is launched by the end of June 2020.