By IANS,
New Delhi: Auto manufacturer Fiat India could come out with a hybrid car by the year-end or early 2011, apart from an India-specific small car, a senior company official said here Wednesday.
“The hybrid car will be powered by CNG (compressed natural gas) and gasoline. We are (also) working on a very India-specific small car model. I can’t give out more details,” Fiat India president and chief executive Rajeev Kapoor said at the ongoing Auto Expo here.
Fiat also plans to double sales this year to 46,000 units but will not launch any new cars other than the variants of existing models, Kapoor added.
“Other than the variants launched today (Wednesday), we will not introduce any new models per se,” he said, adding: “This year, we plan to sell about 46,000 units. Last year, we sold about 23,000 vehicles.”
Kapoor said Fiat’s new models — Grande Punto and Fiat 500 — were launched closer to the end of 2009, and were thus not able to contribute to the company’s overall sales. “But they will in 2010.”
The company Wednesday unveiled the diesel version of Fiat 500, three variants of Grande Punto and two of the Linea model.