Next year would be an important one for General Motors India. The company, which is an equal joint venture between GM Corp and SAIC of China, will begin introduction of jointly developed passenger and commercial vehicle products in India.
Also, GM India may begin exports of the Beat diesel engine and the right hand drive Beat diesel cars next year, since India is the only GM operation globally which makes a diesel engine of one litre capacity.
The company is planning to almost double its diesel engine capacity to three lakh units per annum and take up vehicle production capacity to over 4.6 lakh units by 2013 and plans to invest $500 million for this purpose.
Speaking to DNA, president and MD Karl Slym said that in all, five new products from the JV will be launched across 14 fuel variants.
The first half of 2012 would see introduction of passenger vehicles (an SUV, a saloon and a hatchback) and LCVs would come only in the second half.
GM is also looking to begin exports of Beat diesel engines as well as the car to some markets such as Europe. “India is the only GM operation which is making the Beat diesel engine and a car which uses this diesel engine. We are exploring export opportunities.”
Admitting that the recent downturn in the passenger car market has hurt GM’s sales too, Slym said that sales of petrol models have declined by about 15%.
“We are lucky that the decline in petrol vehicles has been more than made up by the pick-up in diesel vehicle sales. We are selling all that we make of the diesel Captiva, Cruze, Beat and Tavera models. Our petrol models include Aveo, Aveo UVA, Spark, Beat and Optra”.
To a question on the branding for GM-SAIC vehicles, Slym said they will be under the umbrella brand of ‘Chevrolet’. He also said that a mixed distribution model would be followed for the LCVs - in metros and large cities, they would be sold through separate dealerships whereas in the smaller towns and rural areas, cars and LCVs may share dealerships.
GM formed an equal joint venture with SAIC in December 2009. GM India plans to triple sales by 2013; it closed 2010 with sales of 110,804 vehicles against 69,579 vehicles in 2009.
GM has two production plants at Halol in Gujarat and Talegaon in Maharashtra and the $500 million (over Rs2,200 crore) investment will be completed by the end of next year to increase capacity and in R&D activities. The company also plans to hire about 1,000 people by 2012.
Comments