By IANS,
Chennai : India’s second largest car maker Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL) will be expanding its capacity by 40,000 units next year while waiting for clarity on fuel pricing to put up up a diesel engine plant, said a company official Monday.
“We will expand our annual production capacity to 670,000 units from the current 630,000 units by next year. With this capacity we can meet the domestic demand,” HMIL managing director and CEO H.W. Park told reporters here launching the company’s new 814 cc small car Eon.
Officials declining to put an investment figure for the expansion said additional minor investments were going into the assembly line for increasing the plant throughput.
Queried about the company’s plan to build a diesel engine plant to power its models, Park said: “We can’t take a decision without having a clarity on the pricing of petrol and diesel.”
Refuting any plans to phase out the company’s first model Santro launched in 1998, Park said: “We sell around 5,000-6,000 units per month. We are not phasing out Santro.”
He said HMIL would export the Eon to South America and South Africa after meeting the domestic demand.
The company has got bookings for around 5,000 Eons and plans to roll out around 150,000 units per year – nearly one-fourth of its total capacity – to meet the domestic and overseas demand.
Officials told IANS that as Eon is a new model designed from scratch, not many of its components are common to that of other models.
Park said the company had spent around Rs.900 crore for the development of Eon.