After the test assembly, the first serial Ford Figo is going to hit the Indian market in March. With this model Ford is planning to become one of the big players in India and not only the “exotic” brand with less than a small piece of the market.
Ford Figo is sub B category car which will be the part of the “Car for everybody” story in India. Ford Figo is attacking the compact car segment which consist 70% of all cars sold in India. By 2016 this segment will climb to 3 millions units. In this moment more than 50% of the market share belongs to Suzuki local company –Maruti-Suzuki, which is producing 7 models in this segment.
With establishing of this auto plant Ford is trying to play the game with more established auto makers like Suzuki and Hyundai. The price tag of the new Ford Figo will be 350.000 to 450.000 rupees or $7.500 to $9700.
The new Ford Figo will be produced in the brand new Maraimalai Nagar plant build in the city of Chennai. The factory is a $500 million investment and almost 90% of the plant is finished. The plant will produce 200.000 cars and 250.000 engines for the cars which is more than four times than current capacity of 60.000 1.4l diesel engines per annum.
The plant will also produce 1.2l petrol engines. 79% of the parts for the diesel engine and sixty percent of the petrol engines are produced locally in India. The producers for this engine parts are also located at Chennai or close to this automotive industrial centre which is conveniently called Detroit of India.
With the Ford Figo plant build, Chennai is becoming one of the top ten global automobile industry centres with a capacity of 1.2 million cars and 350.000 commercial vehicles per annum and the state Tamil Nadu is producing more than 32% of India capacity. This means that every 20 seconds a new passenger car rolls out of the assembly line and one commercial vehicle on every seventy five seconds.
Besides Ford, five other big players in the automotive industry already have producing plants in Chennai. After Mitsubishi, BMW, Hyundai, Nissan, Renault and recently Ford, Mahindra also decided to establish a plant in this city. But besides auto makers a heavy machinery producers like Caterpillar, Kobelco, Komatsu and Doosan are present in this large industrial city.
A large work force of 700 qualified automotive employees will work in the Figo and the engine plant. With the new Figo, Ford will hit both the domestic and the export markets. Although India is the main market; Ford will export Figo in South Africa and Asia markets.
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