General Motors India (GMI) is planning to export the yet unnamed mini cars 10% of the production by the expected end of this year, 12 months of its launch time period and will gradually increase to 20%. Moreover, GMI is expecting its growth rate of 10% to be stable and looks at a much higher growth rate in the next fiscal year on its new launches. 65,702 vehicles were sold last year; half of these include Chevrolet Spark variants.

Today, GMI president, Karl Slym, said here, “we grew by 10 per cent last fiscal when the industry actually shrank by two per cent. We had expected the industry to register flat growth this year, but things have picked up well in the first couple of months of the fiscal”.  

The highest selling cars of GMI are the Chevrolet Spark and the U-VA and the company is also planning to launch the Mini, built on the Chevrolet Beat platform, another volume segment car towards the end of this year. The price of the car will be around Rs 4 lakh.

The companies Talegaon plant near Pune, which has an annual capacity of 1.4 lakh units will be producing these mini cars. The investment of $300 million on the Talegaon car plant and around $200 million in the powertrain plant nearby is done by GMI. This will help company to start its own local production and shift from the completely knocked down (CKD) unit's production.

Slym said that, “as a result, the localisation in the new mini would be as high as 80 per cent now, and once we have the powertrain or engine plant onstream next year, it will go up to 98 per cent”. 

The company will use the Talegaon plant as an export base for countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, added Slym.  He pointed out that, “We will work on manufacturing both right-hand drive as well as left-hand drive vehicles here so that it throws up more export opportunities”.

Best Selling General Motors (Chevrolet) Cars:
Chevrolet Aveo (Sedan)
Chevrolet Optra (Sedan)
Chevrolet Tavera (SUV)
Chevrolet Captiva (SUV)
Chevrolet Spark (Hatchback)
Chevrolet UVA (Hatchback)
Chevrolet SRV (Hatchback)

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Posted by Naresh Koshti on 22 June, 2009 2:37:03 PM IST #