Mahindra is trying hard to ‘Rise’ on the global automatic scenario. They had recently inaugurated the North American Technical Centre along with launching their first electric scooter GenZe in USA.
And work is already underway, developing a new platform for a car for its international markets as confirmed by Pawan Goenka, Executive Director and President of Mahindra to Autocar. The car may or may not be sold in America as Mahindra hasn’t really revealed any specific plans for the American market.
The North American Technical Centre will be working in tandem with Mahindra Research Valley, Chennai and SsangYong’s research centre in South Korea. Presence in these different facilities will allow Mahindra to truly understand the global market and get valuable inputs to make the upcoming car platform truly global. This would also leverage the company in making their existing products better and more technically sound.
XUV500, the first ‘global’ product from the company isn’t truly a global product by international quality parameters. It falls short of many better markets expectations and is plagued by various issues specially related to electricals and build quality.
America is still the world’s largest car market; and if they do launch the new car there it will give them a huge market to tap. But for that, the product has to be really world-class!
It will be interesting to see what Mahindra comes up with. The company, back here in India, is vigorously testing its compact SUV codenamed S101 and has also started on-road testing of the automatic version of the XUV 500 which will be launched next year.
