In an official communication shared with us, General Motors has announced that they will start exporting vehicles made in India at their Talegaon Plant in Pune.
The production of these vehicles will start from second half of this year and the first model identified for export markets is their Beat hatchback and the first market is Chile. Indian-made Beat will be launched in Chile in the first quarter of 2015.
Chile being a Left Hand Drive market, the export Beat will obviously be modified to cater to the new country. Beat is Chevrolet’s world car and is already sold in many markets across the world. According to GM’s new boss Arvind Saxena, this will create more employment opportunities within the company as well as its suppliers.
But the biggest thought behind this move is to improve utilization capacity at its Talegaon plant which has not really been very impressive with none of the current models selling in good numbers, including the Beat which has fallen down on the sales ladder with the oncoming of competition.
The Press Release doesn’t mention if the export Beat will also include its diesel version. We believe it may not! This also marks another underlying factor that, with the Indian market going through a downturn, manufacturers are eyeing various options to increase their markets to satisfy their utilization targets.
Apart from the not-so-encouraging market, Chevrolet itself doesn’t have very exciting cars apart from Beat and Cruze. The Adra Concept showcased at the Auto Expo appeared to be a possible game-changer for the company but Arvind Saxena in an interview last month crashed all hopes by revealing that they do not have any plans to launch Adra at least till 2017 (more details).
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