Ford EcoSport waiting may go down; Thai plant to take control of North American exports

Ford Motor company is looking forward to export its compact SUV EcoSport to North American markets including US and Canada from its Rayong Thailand plant. Earlier, it was speculated that Ford India will export EcoSport from its Chennai plant. However, now the Thai facility will take its place. But as they say, somebody's loss is somebody's gain- now the waiting period for Indian customers will certainly decrease. The current waiting period for top of the line EcoSport is around three to four months while for base variants its more than five months.

The manufacturing plant in Chennai had shipped more than 35% of its total production of 1.3 lakh vehicles in the last fiscal year. Out of which the majority of exports landed on the European shores. Ford is now looking forward to Rayong Thailand plant to meet the desired lot of 55,000-70,000 units of the facelift version of Ford EcoSport by the early 2016. This shipment though gives an air to the fact that the company might launch the facelift version of EcoSport in India too. In country, this compact SUV first saw daylight in June 2013 and thus its is expected that in year and half the company might bring a minor facelift of its best selling vehicle.

When compared with the financial year 2013, Ford India had witnessed a tremendous growth of 24% in terms of vehicle manufacturing in the fiscal year 2014. Exports too, boomed to 60% from previous year. In terms of retailing the SUV in India, company posted an increase of 9.4% with more than 84,469 units sold.  The company is also targeting on increasing the total production to 1.6 lakh units with more than 1.19 lakh units of EcoSport alone. To meet the desired target, the company will use the plant's production to its maximum by clocking it 24 hrs a day. With its vast dealership backing up, the manufacturer looks forward to churn around 2 lakh units a year.

The Detroit based manufacturing company has recently resumed booking of EcoSport over all its variants. Prior to this, seeing the high demand and extended waiting period for more than eight to nine months, company had stopped taking further booking and paid complete attention in closing the gap. On the commencement of booking, Vinay Piparsania, Executive Director of Marketing Sales and Service at Ford India, said - “Ford India’s game changing SUV EcoSport is aimed squarely at delighting discerning customers in India by offering more than they expect. With 50,000 EcoSports delivered, we have significantly reduced the waiting period and are pleased to extend the opportunity to book the Ford EcoSport to more customers.”

Source: ET

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