[Aditya]

General Motors India has announced the rollout of the first Chevrolet Beat hatchback for export to Mexico. The central American country is the company's second major export market.



General Motors' manufacturing facility at Talegaon, Maharashtra will start shipping cars to Mexico from next month. Sales of the Beat in Mexico are scheduled to begin in December 2015.

The Chevrolet Beat is available in more than 70 markets around the world, primarily as the Chevrolet Spark. Chevrolet has sold more than 1 million Sparks and Beats worldwide.

General Motors began vehicle exports to Chile from its Talegaon facility in September 2014. It exported approximately 1,000 vehicles last year and is targeting exports of 19,000 vehicles this year.

The company is also exploring other markets for exports in an attempt to drive capacity utilization at the Talegaon facility.

GM CEO Mary Barra was in India recently and announced an additional investment of $ 1 billion. The Talegaon facility, which currently has a production capacity of 1,30,000 vehicles annually, will increase its base capacity to 2,20,000 vehicles by 2025. It will also become a global export hub for GM, with up to 30% of its annual production planned for markets outside India.

[hangover]

This is good to hear. I read somewhere that Chile is the second largest car market for Indian made cars after South Africa.

So with cars I'm sure Indian made spares like wiring harnesses, belts, air filters etc will also find their way.

[Tushar]

GM India has announced that it is shipping the first 3,000 left-hand-drive Chevrolet Beats to Mexico. The vehicles left the Mumbai Port Trust in Maharashtra and are expected to reach Mexico in eight weeks, with sales beginning in December 2015.

The company now plans to sell 20,000 vehicles in 2015 compared to 1,000 in 2014. This number will further increase to approximately 50,000 vehicles in 2016.

[hangover]

Do we know if these are petrol or diesel models? Far as I know The quality of diesel is still iffy in Mexico.

[blue_pulsar]

I was wondering if exporting to Mexico makes so much financial sense for the company? Mexico is another country like India which has lots of manpower at lower costs. Wondering what could be the logic here?

[rohanjf]

Originally Posted by blue_pulsar

I was wondering if exporting to Mexico makes so much financial sense for the company? Mexico is another country like India which has lots of manpower at lower costs. Wondering what could be the logic here?

I think Mexican factories are being used for manufacturing/assembling bigger cars that are specific to American markets, which has left no scope for manufacturing small cars.

OT: I am sure that not only GM, but even Volkswagen is following the same business strategy.

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by rohanjf

I think Mexican factories are being used for manufacturing/assembling bigger cars that are specific to American markets, which has left no scope for manufacturing small cars.

OT: I am sure that not only GM, but even Volkswagen is following the same business strategy.

Not only bigger cars, but more profitable as well. Why waste precious manufacturing capacity where they can make profitable high margin vehicles.

On the other hand ,you have spare capacity or rather low capacity utilization here and losses because of that. Exporting cars from here solves that problem and gives the Mexican units more cheaper/smaller car to sell and the small cheap cars are naturally more popular in a country like Mexico.

[ACM]

They might as well plan for exporting all vehicles they manufacture here. The vehicles are currently just not what we Indians seem to want and they don't seem to have a strategy in place to counter that in the short or mid term.

They are indeed better of letting India be their manufacturing base for low cost manufacturing.

They need to in the meanwhile reinvent themselves entirely for the Indian market sales.