Harley-Davidson India Plant Visit; Witnessing The Making Of X440

Plant visits are always fun! The activity, the energy at an automotive manufacturing facility is a joy to behold for automotive enthusiasts. And recently, Hero MotoCorp along with Harley-Davidson, invited team car&bike to visit their ‘garden factory’ at Neemrana, Rajasthan, around 100 km from Gurugram, in order for us to see the manufacturing of the Harley-Davidson X440. And Kudos to Harley, the company made it even more interesting by having us ride the X440 from Gurugram to the plant. Now, the ride was long enough for us to get an idea of how the X440 behaves when ridden over long distances and then, there was the excitement of seeing it getting manufactured at the end of the ride. 

Also Read: Harley-Davidson X440 Road Test Review

The Ride: Harley-Davidson X440

We were to begin riding from Sohna, a suburb of Gurugram, to Neemrana, Rajasthan. Early in the morning, we were handed over the keys to an X440 and started riding towards the plant. The route was fairly simple, ride through the backroads from Sohna until you reach the NH48 and then it’s a straight run to Neemrana. To start off, the X440 definitely generates interest when out on the road. It turned heads but we had a few people ask us about the motorcycle on the one occasion where we stopped for a quick cup of tea. 

Now on the ride! The X440, with its smooth and torquey engine was happy to stay at triple digit speeds for a significant amount of time, with little to no buzz. The motor is refined and felt effortless at cruising speeds. The ride quality, while stiff, wasn’t bothersome and did well on the not so perfect backroads and on NH48. The motorcycle felt comfortable, with a comfy seat and upright stance, which is good for riding over long distances. It took us a little less than two hours to reach Hero’s plant at Neemrana, with traffic, cows and pedestrians thrown in. 

Also Read: Hero Mavrick 440 vs Harley-Davidson X440; How Are They Different

The Factory: Hero MotoCorp, Neemrana Plant

Once we reached Hero’s ‘garden factory’, which is spread over 47 acres, we had some time to freshen up and then briefed about the plant, which began operations in 2014 and currently manufactures Hero’s 100 cc motorcycles along with the Harley-Davidson X440 and the Hero Mavrick 440. The Neemrana plant is not only eco-friendly but has multiple green initiatives going on, justifying its name of the garden factory. It has solar panels that generate 1.2 MW of electricity, which is around 10 per cent of the plant’s daily requirements.

The entire facility is a zero liquid-waste discharge plant, with zero waste-to-landfill waste. The facility is also water-positive, which means all the water used is recycled and reused, with zero waste. Of course, the Neemrana plant uses state-of-the-art machinery, with advanced robotics along with latest tools and tech. 

The other cool thing that we saw at the plant was the Greenhouse vegetable garden on the rooftop, where Hero MotoCorp grows veggies like cucumber, lettuce, mint, coriander, various types of tomatoes and so on, with the help of hydroponics. The idea is to grow all these crops with barely 2-3 per cent of water required to grow them in soil. The required water to grow them is captured from the air. There is no need for pesticides, heavy metals for growing these vegetables and the yield is thrice of that when these veggies grown conventionally.   

Also Read: Harley-Davidson X440 Is The Premium Motorcycle of The Year At 2024 C&B Awards

The Making of the Harley-Davidson X440    

Now on to the most exciting part! After a short plant tour, we finally visited the assembly line where the X440 is manufactured. And like most plant visits, it was fun to see the motorcycle getting manufactured from scratch. Without going into technical details, here are a few quick facts that you need to know about the assembly line and the Neemrana plant.

1. Over 250 units of the Harley-Davidson X440 are manufactured every day. The capacity can be ramped up to 500 units a day when required.
2. It takes about two hours to manufacture one unit of the X440 from start to finish.
3. The assembly line that caters to the X440 has over 120 stations and can hold up to 30 units at any given time.
4. The plant can manufacture up to 2,700 100 cc motorcycles every day.
5. The plant has a gender diversity of 20-30 per cent across various sections. 
6. The highlight of the plant is the automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS), which is a fully automated two-wheeler storage system. It can house close to 4,000 units of 100 cc motorcycles and 1,500 units of the 440 range, which includes X440 and the Mavrick 400. It is a multi-storey rack system that uses pallets to store motorcycles and each pallet has a unique barcode and RFID tag that can be used to retrieve the same. 

This was the first instance of Hero MotoCorp taking journalists for a plant visit, after it formed a partnership with Harley-Davidson for sales, service, distribution and marketing in India and it was a memorable one too, considering we rode the very motorcycle whose manufacturing we were to witness at the plant. 

Photography: Harley-Davidson/Hero MotoCorp