Maruti to roll out 100% Indian car by 2010

Starting 2010,  India’s automotive giant Maruti Suzuki will design its own cars in the country. With a view to kick off the plan, the company will be hiring as many as 1000 engineers in various engineering disciplines like design, electrical and mechanical engineering, the company has said. This means that post-2010, Maruti will be capable enough to launch a complete indigenous car designed and manufactured by Indian engineers.

The move is said to be in line with the car maker’s plans to upgrade its India hub as a global design centre. Maruti Suzuki already treats India as its manufacturing and exports global hub for its small cars. With the new plan pushed towards reality, it is expected that the company would not have to depend fully on Japanese technology from Suzuki to make its own cars.

The strategy will so help Maruti Suzuki to go in for a complete model change and a 100 per cent Indian car from the Maruti stables would be possible when it happens. It is expected that a purely indigenous Indian car would roll out of the Maruti assembly line by year 2011.

Meanwhile, Suzuki has unveiled a strategy to roll out lighter cars too. This is part of the company’s efforts to go back to an age when it used to be known far and wide for its light weight vehicles. The Maruti 800, the company’s bread and butter model till recently, weighs all of 665 kg. A cut of 2 kg from the total weight is expected by the company to bring down the cost for the model. Added to this would be a boost in fuel efficiency. It has been pointed out by the company brass that costs stand to be cut by at least by Re 1 for each of about 20,000 components the car would house. Aimed at such a scenario, the car maker is now talking to vendors to cut down the weight of each part by 1 gram, which will ultimately lead to a total reduction of about 20 kg.