South Korean auto major Hyundai plans to roll out electric vehicles from its plant in India, which is set to become one of its global regional headquarters with more responsibility for local long-term planning, a senior company official said.
Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL), which has sold 8.8 million vehicles cumulatively in the country in 20 years of operations, is also targeting to cross the 10 million milestone in the first quarter of 2021.
With plans to bring eight new products between 2018 and 2020, HMIL is also increasing its annual production capacity to 7.5 lakh units from January next year from 7 lakh at present.
"An electric SUV is among the eight products planned to be launched here between this year and 2020. It is expected in the second half of 2019. Initially. we will import it as completely knocked down unit," HMIL Managing Director and CEO Y K Koo told PTI.
Going forward, depending on the market response and government support for electric vehicles, he said: "Our plan is to produce EVs from our Chennai plant in the long term."
Elaborating on the significance of the development, Koo said: "It empowers us with more responsibility for long-term planning for up to ten years for the local market. Earlier we were focussed on short term plans for up to three years."
On capacity enhancement in India, Koo said:"We will increase production by 50,000 units from January 2019 at the Chennai plant. So by next year we will have a total annual capacity of 7.5 lakh units, up from 7 lakh units this year."
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