General Motors recently shared its future plans for India, with the Vice-President of General Motors India, P. Balendran confirming that the company is making every possible effort to launch 5 new cars in the next 18 months in the domestic market. Most of the new vehicles will be produced through its partnership with SAIC. As a matter of fact, the commercial vehicles account for almost 40 per cent sales in India, but surprisingly, the company has not produced even one product that falls in this category as yet.
Therefore, one can expect three light commercial vehicles from the General Motors camp that would represent the company in the commercial car segment in India. General Motors India has also mulled upon introducing two passenger car vehicles by 2014. It is important to note that all the upcoming models would be fresh in every sense and none of them would be related to any existing vehicles. Moreover, the American auto maker is planning to launch 14 variants of the 5 new vehicles.
During the recent unveiling of the Chevrolet Beat diesel variant in the Tamil Nadu market, P Balendran addressed the media, saying that "In the next 18 months, we plan to introduce five new products. The models will be a hatchback, sedan, an utility vehicle, a van and Euro-IV version of (SUV) Tavera”. He further added that the first product will be a utility vehicle, to be rolled out during the first quarter of next year. It can be sub-one tonne category."
According to the Vice-President, the American car maker has undertaken a large scale expansion plan in both plants at Halol (Gujarat) and Talegaon (Maharashtra), and has even invested $1 billion i.e. around Rs. 5,000 crore till date.
The light commercial vehicles would be rolled out from the Halol plant, which also produces hatchbacks like Spark and Aveo-UVA, mid-size sedan Aveo, premium sedan Optra, Sports Utility Vehicle Tavera and premium SUV Captiva.
