Spark Electra to hit Indian roads in 12 months

The electric version of India's small car Spark will hit the Indian road in the next 12 months, said its vice president P Balendran.

The company had entered into a technology tie-up with Bangalore-based Reva Electric Car Company to produce green cars for the Indian market last month. "While Reva will provide the technology, GM will do the engineering and manufacturing of the green cars," he said.

Launching the D-segment sedan 'Chevrolet Cruze' here on Tuesday, Ankush Arora, vice-president (sales, marketing and aftersales), GM India, said the D-segment car market in India was currently pegged at 4,000 units a month, which was expected to grow at 10-12 per cent next year. Cruze comes in two variants -- LT and LTZ -- which are priced at Rs 10.99 lakh (Rs 1.09 million) and Rs 12.45 lakh or Rs 1.24 million (ex-showroom Hyderabad) respectively.

"We expect to sell 800 units of Cruze a month to start with and take the number to 2,500 by the end of this calendar year," Arora said, adding that the company had received 1,200 bookings for Cruze in the last 15 days, of which close to 65 are from Hyderabad.

GM India plans to export 20 per cent of the production at its Halol (Gujarat) and Talegaon (Maharashtra) manufacturing plants from 2011.

The two facilities together have a capacity of 225,000 units a year. The company is setting up a new line with a 160,000-unit per year capacity at Talegaon to manufacture petrol and diesel engines, which will go on stream by the end of next year, he added.