GM will double production at Talegaon plant

General Motors India plans to double production at its Talegaon plant from the next month following an overwhelming response to its newly launched Chevrolet Beat.

The company plans to introduce a second shift at the Talegaon plant from March. It has already started a second shift at its plant in Halol, Gujarat.

“Beat has registered over 10,000 bookings since its launch and in order to match this growing demand we are introducing a second shift at the Talegaon plant which will double the existing production,” P Balendran, vice-president (corporate affairs), GM India, said.

Beat was launched at the Delhi Auto Expo last month at an introductory price of Rs 3.34 lakh. The company, which currently produces 200 Beats every day, is looking at scaling it up to 400 with the second shift. The installed capacity of the plant is 1,40,000 units annually.

Beat currently has a waiting period of 45 days to 2 months depending on the location and GM wants to bring it down once the production picks up.

Also, the Talegaon facility would now be utilised only for manufacturing Beat while Spark, which was rolled out from here initially, would now be manufactured at the Halol plant.

“At Talegaon we are concentrating on Beat whereas the Halol plant will manufacture other cars,” Balendran said.  Following the second shift, the company is producing nearly 450 vehicles at its Halol plant split between Spark, Cruze and Uva.

The powertrain plant would be operational by October this year with the rollout of the diesel engine to be fitted in Beat.