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INTERVIEW BMW MOTORRAD CEO STEPHAN SCHALLER P60 same platform as BMWs? To a certain extent, yes. So for example there would be a shared engine? Could be. How big are we talking about—250-300cc? There have been photos on the web of what appears to be a prototype single-cylinder TVS-BMW of around that capacity. We always said—and I am not saying more today—it will be below 500cc. Single-cylinder or twin? I think a single is a good place to start. We will reveal more of this within the next two years. Sorry, I can't be more specific. Will these TVS-BMW products be mar- keted in a similar way to those made in India by Bajaj for your KTM rivals? As entry level products in developed markets, and prestige models in developing markets? First of all there is a big difference between the KTM Bajaj and BMW TVS linkups, because we don't have any financial implications between us. It's the way I just described before—there is a mutual interest in building new models, and we call it cooperation. Of course, this would be the other way around from KTM and Bajaj, where Bajaj bought a significant part of KTM stock, and I doubt TVS is going to buy part of BMW. Do you plan to invest in TVS? This is not on the table at the moment. This is a very strong fourth generation privately-owned Indian company which has no need at the mo- ment for outside investment. Everything works very well at present on a partnership basis without financial links. But to go back to what you said just now about different level bikes for India and for the rest of the world—no, this is not the case. We have now five production locations for BMW Motorrad besides our main factory in Berlin: Thailand, Brazil, China and coming soon, India. Every bike that is pro- duced in one of these five locations is under our name, under our badge as made by BMW, so they are all for world markets. There is no differentiation like saying the one production is for low-priced markets, and the other production is for high- priced markets. We don't have this with TVS. So in India TVS will be producing a dedicat- ed sub-500cc BMW model range. But those other plants you mentioned are assembling BMWs from CKD kits, which therefore have to be manufactured in Berlin. You are now at the stage of building 130,000 units there annual- ly. Are you going to run out of capacity there? No, we have made a lot of investment in what is historic factory for BMW, adding lots of differ- ent buildings to expand production. This gives us more than sufficient capacity in Berlin to look after the other four locations, especially in terms of manufacturing the more complicated engines built there. How about China, where you have had an agreement for some time with Loncin to assemble the F650 engine, without ever developing that alliance. Are you thinking of expanding there? The C-evolution's power plant gets assembled at BMW's high- voltage battery plant in Berlin.