GM India to export 10% of its mini car by 1yr of launch

General Motors India (GMI) plans to export 10 per cent of its production of the yet-to-be named mini car, expected end of this year, 12 months from its launch, and gradually take this up to 20 per cent. Also, GMI expects to maintain its growth rate of 10 per cent this year, while it forecasts a much higher growth next fiscal banking on its new launches. It sold 65,702 vehicles last year, half of which were Chevrolet Spark variants. "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,” Karl Slym, president, GMI said here today.

The Chevrolet Spark and the U-VA are the highest selling cars for the company, and it is planning to launch the Mini, built on the Chevrolet Beat platform, another volume segment car towards the end of this year. The car will be priced at around Rs 4 lakh. It will be produced in the company's Talegaon plant near Pune, which has an annual capacity of 1.4 lakh units. GMI has recently invested $300 million on the Talegaon car plant and around $200 million in the powertrain plant nearby. This would help the company to shift from the completely knocked down(CKD) unit's production to start its own local production. "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", Slym said.

He added that the company will use the Talegaon plant as an export base for countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. "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", Slym pointed out.