Honda's new Tapukara plant to be operationalised from March 2014

Honda, the Japanese automaker is working aggressively to enhance its portfolio in the Indian car market. A couple of days back, the company introduced the fourth generation City sedan, which will go on sale in January 2014. The company has three more products to come including Mobilio, new Jazz and a compact SUV- Vezel. With this, Honda needs to enhance its production volume and its new production unit in Tapukara, Rajasthan will be operationalised in March next year.

According to FE, Honda's second manufacturing unit will start production in March, and Mobilio MPV will be the first vehicle to roll out from the facility. It is also expected that the MPV will be launched in April-May, followed by the new Jazz by the third quarter (festive season) of 2014.

Based on the Brio/Amaze platform, the Mobilio MPV will come to India in both diesel and petrol guise. The compact MPV will feature the company's very famous 1.5-litre i-DTEC diesel engine. The petrol mill is expected to be the 1.5-litre i-VTEC, or to keep its costs down the company might also use the smaller 1.2-litre i-VTEC.

Honda's new Tapukara plant will double the annual production capacity. Its Gurgaon facility has an annual output of around 1.7-lakh units and the new unit will add around 1.2-lakh units, making a total production to around 2.9 lakh.

Source: FE