The company is working on upgrading its entire models and will shift all of them to a new engine platform from April this year to make products compliant to stricter emission norms of 'Bharat Stage (BS) III' for two-wheelers in 13 cities and BS II in the rest of the country.
"Most definitely the new bikes will be expensive. The new engines will be of a different caliber and that will make them expensive," Eicher Motors Managing Director and CEO Siddhartha Lal told reporters here.
A Royal Enfield bike now costs close to Rs 1 lakh.
He, however, refused to give further details like the prospective date for making any formal price hike or the likely quantum of hike.
Royal Enfield has five models in the country — Classic, Classic 500 CC, Thunderbird, Machismo and Electra.
The company also said that it is facing a huge back-log in delivery of its premium model Classic 500, which will take at least five months to clear.
"Orders have been beyond our expectations and we have a back-log of 3,000-4,000 bikes in the domestic market and around 2,000 for export. We will be able to clear up the backlog only by June-July," Lal said.
He said the company has delivered over 1,000 units of the Classic 500 in the Indian market since the bike's launch in November last year.
