Honda Motor to double capacity by year-end

Honda Motor Company today announced that it plans to double production capacity in India to 100,000 units from an anticipated capacity of 50,000 by end of 2005. The company also plans to start manufacturing the Honda Civic by next year.

HMC president and CEO, Takeo Fukui, announced the company's three-year mid-term plan for its worldwide operations in Japan today.

Highlighting plans for the Indian operations, Fukui said the company plans to increase its capacity from 30,000 units to 50,000 by the year-end, and further expanded 100,000 units by 2010.

HMC operates in India through its subsidiary Honda Siel Cars India Ltd.

In addition to meeting the growing demands of its popular models, City and Accord, the increased capacity of the plant would also accommodate the start-up of local production of the new Civic, within the next year.

Talking about Civic, Fukui said, "The all-new Civic, developed under our approach of creating products to meet the needs of local customers, is a true global car with sales of more than 600,000 units annually in 160 countries in the world and with production in six regions."

He further added, "While introducing advanced powertrain production technologies in Asia, Honda will pursue high quality worldwide and utilise its flexible, complementary global supply network."

Honda Siel the City in December 1997, while the Accord was launched in July 2001 followed by its latest version, the all-new Seventh Generation Honda Accord, in July 2003.

In the same year, the company also introduced Honda CR-V and the all-new Honda City. In 2004, the company launched a more powerful version of its Accord model, the Honda Accord V6 and the latest in the CR-V series, the new CR-V.