Diesel technology used for General Motors India (GMI) Beat and Sail models will later be made available to other markets, starting with North and South Africa.
Lowell Paddock, president and managing director, General Motors India, told Business Standard: “The diesel development carried out on our future Sail and MPV programmes will certainly support entry into markets outside India where consumers have a strong preference for diesel engines.”
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Company executives indicated that markets in North and South Africa would be considered initially.
While the company does not have any plans to manufacture the one-itre diesel engine for the Beat elsewhere in the world, no final call has been taken as to whether diesel engines for the Sail and the MPV will be manufactured exclusively in India, the paper reported.
The Beat diesel, the company’s smallest diesel engine globally, is manufactured at GM’s plant in Talegaon, Maharashtra. The capability for diesel engines is being developed by GM’s technical centre in Bangalore which currently has 2,100 employees. The centre is a medium-sized engineering operation which specialises in tailoring vehicles for the Indian market while also undertaking engineering work for GM globally.
GMI corporate affairs chief, P Balendran, said: “Diesel vehicles constitute around 42-45% of overall passenger vehicle sales today. But wherever, petrol and diesel variants are both available, 80% of sales come from the diesel option. If I talk about the Beat alone, diesel sales used to be 40% earlier, now it has gone up to 80%. It has thus become important to develop the capability.”
Indian industry estimates are that diesel variants accounted for 28% of passenger vehicle sales in the last financial year. With petrol prices rising five times in the current financial year, the differential between the two fuels is now INR25.51 per litre, up from INR10 in April 2010, making an increasing number of consumers opt for diesel cars.
