Komatsu Ltd. (6301), the world’s second-biggest construction equipment maker, has begun sales of its
automated bulldozers in the U.S., the home turf of bigger rival
Caterpillar Inc., in a bid to keep pace with global competitors.
The company plans to sell as many as 500 of the new dozers,
weighing 15 metric tons each, in the U.S. in three years,
Tetsuji Ohashi, president of the Tokyo-based Komatsu, said in an
interview. These “ICT intensive” bulldozers will eventually be
driverless, he said.
Komatsu, which also designed the mining industry’s first
driverless trucks, started selling the automated bulldozers in
the U.S. last month and plans to phase out its standard
operator-controlled models. The machines will likely attract
customers in Europe and the U.S., where labor costs for vehicle
operators are high, Hirokazu Miyagi, an analyst at Daiwa
Securities Co., said in a June 26 report.
“It’s important we offer customers products that
overwhelmingly differentiate from others,” Ohashi said in a
June 26 interview. When products are similar customers will
chose cheaper ones, he said.
Komatsu shares rose as much as 2.2 percent to 2,243 yen as
of 9:17 a.m. in Tokyo trading. The stock has gained 5.4 percent
this year, underperforming a 31 percent increase in the Nikkei
225 Stock Average.
Cheaper Models
Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar has sales almost three
time the size of Komatsu, while Sany Heavy Industry Co. (600031), run by
Chinese billionaire Liang Wengen, has expanded and become the
top excavator supplier by selling cheaper models in China, the
world’s biggest market.
During a demonstration of an ICT bulldozer, it took only 3
hours to train an inexperienced Komatsu worker to complete
skilled works, which would usually need more than three years
using a conventional model, according to the company.
The new bulldozer features fully automatic blade control
and is able to perform construction works from rough dozing to
finished grading, Komatsu said. The new dozer is able to
automatically control its blade based on construction drawing
data by making use of three-dimensional GPS information, it said.
The company introduced what it called the world’s first
hybrid excavators in 2008, using a similar technology to the one
powering Tokyo Motor Corp.’s Prius car. It signed a deal with
Rio Tinto Group in 2011 to build a fleet of at least 150
driverless trucks for use at its Pilbara iron ore mines in
Australia.
China
In China, sales in June may increase from a year ago after
a decline in May, Ohashi said. Komatsu hasn’t seen any change in
its underlying business in China amid market concern over the
country’s outlook, he said.
China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite index of shares slid
to a four-year low last week even as the central bank pledged to
stabilize money markets amid a credit crunch that sent the
nation’s overnight repurchase rate to a record on June 20.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic measures will add to
demand already spurred by the nation’s spending to reconstruct
areas wrecked by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, Ohashi said.
Domestic rival Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. (6305) may raise
domestic output to meet stronger demand, President Yuichi Tsujimoto said June 25 in an interview.
“Domestic demand has been rising recently after the
domestic market suffered a long-term slump since the burst of
the bubble economy in 1990,” Ohashi said. “Our orders for May
were quite high, with the level not seen in the past two
decades,” and the trend for Japan’s strength “will last three
or four years, he said.
