GM India commisions its power train plant at Pune

General Motors (GM) India has started power train manufacturing facility at Talegaon plant near Pune The plant has a capacity of manufacturing 1.4 lakh engines per year and it will be increased further.GM has invested Rs250 crore for this facility. These engines are made for small cars like Chevrolet Beat and Chevrolet Spark for both petrol and diesel.

P Balendran, vice president GM India said, “GM India’s manufacturing facility at Talegaon has played a vital role in matching the supply with the increasing demand expectations. With the recent addition of the second shift of production at the plant, we will continue to match up to expectations of providing the very best. The commissioning of the power train plant will make it an integrated facility.

Talegaon plant manufactures Chevrolet Spark and Chevrolet Beat. Currently, the plant is running a single shift producing 200 power trains per day. 

GM is planning to expand its dealership and sales point network. Currently, it has 70 dealers and 250 sales points. It will appoint more 230 dealers all over India.

According to Balendran, now GM's 60 per cent sales comes from smaller cities and only 40 market is located in metro cities. The company is focusing more on smaller cities. GM has tied up with 12 banks for the financial assistance for the customers. The has no plans to provide finances on its own.

Balendran added that GM is planning to launch five more vehicles in next two years out of which three will be LCVs and two will be passenger cars. One passenger car is a small car and another is a sedan.

Speaking about the localisation of the manufacturing, he said, “We are giving preference to local manufacturers. Indian component industry is enough matured now because the customs duty has drastically came down, the only constraint is capacity but it could be solved. We have 70 per cent of localisation in manufacturing at our plant.”

GM is launching five new vehicles. There will be three light commercial vehicles and two passenger cars in next two years. One will be small car and other is sedan. GM has spent 500 million dollars for the auto components world wide.

The Talegaon plant has clocked a total production of 84,349 units till July 31, 2010 and registered the highest production figures in April 2010 with 6856 units. The plant has also commenced in-house stamping.