General Motors gears up to enter LCV business

General Motors is all ready to enter the Indian LCV, that is, Light Commercial Vehicle business which is a speedily growing business these days. GM is planning to launch passenger versions and cargo in the early 2012. To make an entry into this segment, GM will be using its Chinese joint venture with SAIC- Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. GM India president Karl Slym commented that the company is working quite aggressively to introduce commercial vehicles in India and General Motors expects to have sizeable numbers in the market once the vehicle is launched.

Slym added that for these commercial vehicles which the company is planning to launch, the Halol facility will be acting as the main hub. General Motors is also planning to provide diesel and some other alternate fuels. The company is also making an investment of Rs 250 crore at the Halol facility and it will be increasing the production capacity to around 100,000 vehicles at that Halol facility. Most of this amount will be utilised for commercial vehicles.

The vans will be five–ten seaters and the pick-ups will be have around one-tonne payload capacity. Slym stated that the diesel engines  and these vehicles will be less than 1.5 litres and those will come up from the powertrain facility which is situated at Talegaon. The company has decided to start a separate sales network for LCV business for taking on the ace Tata Motors. General Motors has also decided that for this purpose, it will not be tapping into its car sales network. Slym further added that they have decided for having a separate sales network because the customer profile for LCVs will be different from that of a regular car customer.

General Motors crossover model, GM Chevrolet Cruz is ready to rock the Indian roads in October ending its long wait on 12th of October which will be its new model in the upper mid-sized segment. GM will price the car at Rs. 12-14 lakh and pitch it against Honda Civic, Skoda Laura and Toyota Corolla. The new model GM Cruze is expected be powered by 2.0L common rail turbo diesel engine with 150 bhp of power and 330nm of torque.

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