Popular Vuka scooter now national
South African businessman Barney Esterhuyzen saw a gap in the market for “personal mobility”and decided to fill this gap with the Vuka scooter. Now the company has gone national with assebly plants in Gauteng, Durban, Port Elizabeth, George, Lydenburg and Bloemfontein and more than 80 outlets.
Tony Cundill, an aeronautical engineer responsible for the development phase of the Vuka project, says that they now assemble two motorcycle models and two types of VTM quads at their Cape Town headquarters and it takes less than an hour to asseble a motorcycle or scooter from start to end. (starting point is “semi-knocked down”)
He says it is mostly a manual operation with a lot of boxes to move and certain people are responsible for opening them, then the assemblers load them on the bench and put the bike together. Another person is responsible for testing the bikes. There are 12 people involved in assembly.
After the assembly process, the platform is lowered to ground level and the seat is lifted to expose the engine. The assembler now makes sure everything in the engine bay is in order and the bike has enough oil for start-up. The carburettor gets some fuel and the bike is started. Everything is checked – from the controls to the lights and switches and the engine is shut down again.
Now the Vuka is ridden to the testing area under its own power. So all Vuka’s undergo serious testing and it looks like Barney Esterhuyzen’s vision of “a revolution in personal mobility”is becoming a reality with Vuka Scooters becoming more popular by the day.
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