A Singapore company, which was the only one to
produce motorcycles here in recent years, is closing down after
four years.
Alife Air Automobiles, which had a showroom and
assembly plant in Bukit Batok, was producing its own brand of
motorcycles and started with a scooter called A Bike Knight.
A recent check with the Accounting and Corporate
Regulatory Authority showed that the company is undergoing a
court-ordered winding-up and being liquidated.
It had an order book of about 300 scooters, which were
assembled from parts mainly imported from China and an engine from
the United States. But so far, Alife has managed to deliver only 20
of them.
Alife president and group chief executive officer Devan
Nair said production stopped early last year due to high rental and
labour costs, and a "shareholder dispute".
He declined to elaborate on the dispute. The company
vacated its Bukit Batok office later in the year.
"Things happen in business. We successfully delivered
our first model and we had a lot of supporters," he added. Mr Nair
declined to discuss the company's financials, saying the matter was
in the hands of the liquidators.
Fleet owner SH Cycle, which received the 20 A Bikes,
had ordered 300 from Alife but managed to register only three of
them due to Alife's closure.
Its director, Mr Royston Ho, said: "It put me in a
difficult position because I was looking to replace about 100 of my
motorcycles which were going to be scrapped. I had to source for
other brands."
Approximate price of an Indonesian- or Chinese-made
motorcycle of the same capacity
Alife made headlines after becoming the second
Singapore company to make its own motorcycles. The now-defunct
Tiger Motors was the first.
When the A Bike was launched two years ago, Mr Nair
said he was working on incorporating a rotary engine into a
motorcycle - a radical departure from the piston design of almost
all motorcycle engines.
Alife signed a $600,000 contract with American firm
Freedom Motors for the project. Freedom Motors, which made the
rotary engines, told The Straits Times that it received an initial
$150,000 and three scooters from Alife, and completed the
integration.
"Unfortunately, it appears that Alife ran out of funds
before Freedom Motors could pursue EPA (US Environmental Protection
Agency) certification and undertake the engineering required to put
its motorcycle into volume production in Singapore or China," said
Dr Paul Moller, president of Moller International, which runs
Freedom Motors.
Freedom Motors added that it was also not paid for work
done to to integrate the rotary engine into a three-wheeled
tuk-tuk.
" It is unfortunate that the cooperation had to end
because the company winded up. I plan to relook the agenda of Alife
after this episode," said Mr Nair.
When it was first launched in 2015, the A Bike received
positive reviews. A
report in The New Paper in 2015 said the scooter - which
comes in 125cc and 150cc models - was "easy to operate and
maintain".
A motorcycle industry veteran, who declined to be
named, said that Alife likely lacked the experience. "They were
planning to sell 200 units a month, which is more than what the
major players in the current market are doing. It was not
possible," he said.
High labour and rental costs would have made
manufacturing motorcycles here challenging, he added. "The major
Japanese brands have established their plants in markets with lower
costs, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam."
Other experts pointed to the A Bike being too expensive
at $4,988,without a certificate of entitlement. Indonesian- or
Chinese-made motorcycles of the same capacity cost under
$3,000.
TNP