JSW Greentech has stepped into India's electric commercial vehicle space with a new brand called Ampstar. The company showed a 55-tonne electric tractor-trailer and an electric bus at an event in Mumbai.
The Brand
Ampstar will be the single name under which all of JSW Greentech's electric trucks and buses will be sold. The word joins "ampere", the unit of electric current, with "star", which the company says stands for aspiration, leadership and progress.
JSW Group Chairman Sajjan Jindal admitted that trucks and buses are not the group's core business. He said the main idea is to act as a catalyst in changing how India moves goods and people, speeding up the shift from diesel to electric.
The Factory
Production will begin at a greenfield facility in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra. The 90-acre site, whose groundwork started in October 2024, will be able to build 15,000 vehicles a year — 10,000 electric buses and 5,000 electric trucks.
The plant will make truck cabins, build bus bodies and assemble battery packs. Battery cells will be brought in from abroad to begin with. JSW Greentech says this will be the country's first commercial vehicle factory with a pre-treatment and electro-deposition setup, which improves protection against rust. The site will also run on integrated digital systems covering planning, product design and shop-floor execution.
Vehicles Planned
The first trucks will be 55-tonne tractor-trailers aimed at steel, cement, mining and port operators. Tippers, fixed-body trucks and dumpers will join the line-up later. Buyers can choose fixed or swappable batteries, and each truck will be built to suit the customer's duty cycle.
"Our product is not an off-the-shelf product. It is customised," said Sumit Mittal, CEO of JSW Greentech. He added that prices will differ based on features and application.
The bus range will run from seven to 18 metres, serving staff transport, city routes, schools and airport tarmac duty.
Early Strategy
Sales will be direct business-to-business to start with, not through a wide dealer network. Buyers can pick outright purchase, cost-per-kilometre or wet lease, backed by financing, charging support, maintenance and battery-as-a-service.
The company will first target closed-loop routes — fixed runs between factories, mines and ports — where charging or swapping points can be set up at known locations. JSW's own steel, cement and port businesses use around 17,000 trucks, giving Ampstar a ready fleet base to prove its running costs.