Skoda Auto India Pvt Ltd (SAIPL) will soon present a plan to parent company Volkswagen that proposes launching six new cars in India. These will include the much awaited Maruti Swift-rivaling new-age VW Polo and a Hyundai Creta-rivaling SUV.
It may be noted here that the parent company has assigned Skoda Auto India with the task to handle product development for both Volkswagen and Skoda in India. As per a recent report, Skoda Auto India has been pretty bullish with developing new strategies and are now looking to get a go-ahead from the parent company to launch as many as six new Skoda and Volkswagen cars in India.
If everything goes as per Skoda Auto India’s plan, the company will make an investment of more than EUR 1 Billion (Rs 8014 crore) to revamp the product portfolios of the two VW Group brands. The proposal talks about bringing in six models based on the Volkswagen’s much-publicized MQB platform. These six cars include the new-gen Polo, which will go on to rival the hot-selling new Maruti Swift and production-spec Skoda Vision X to rival the very popular Hyundai Creta SUV.
Skoda will also develop a cost-effective version of the MQB platform. It may be noted here that the high costs involved have made bringing mainstream cars based on MQB platform to India totally unfeasible. Hence, an affordable version, dubbed as the MQB A0 IN, will be developed for India-specific products. The production-spec Skoda Vision X will be based on this platform and is likely to debut by 2020-21.
Other than this, the localized MQB platform will also play a huge role in the growth of exports. This plan will be presented to the Volkswagen board of directors for approval within next 2 to 3 weeks. The final plan of action will likely be made within the next 2 months. So, by August 2018, we should have clarity on what’s coming our way from the Indian subsidiaries of Skoda and Volkswagen. Fingers crossed!
[“Source-cartoq”]