| "We have presented our designs to Tata Motors and have got a favourable response from them," said SK Mittal, director, R&D, Exide Industries. The lead-acid battery for the small car would be small in size and cost competitive, said Mittal. |
| "The small car battery will be technologically advanced and could be made on a massive scale to get better economies of scale. Similarly, the battery for the global truck is going to be contemporary to world standards," he said. Exide has tied up with Japanese battery makers Shinobe, a Hitachi company, and Furukawa for technology. |
| The Rs 1 lakh car is Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata's dream project and is likely to be launched in 2007-08. The company is expected to ultimately manufacture around 1 million such cars annually. |
| Tata Motors also plans to create a new platform to manufacture trucks called the "world truck project" utilising the latest technologies available with the Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Company (TDCV)of South Korea and Hispano of Spain. |
| The global truck is likely to be ready for production by 2008-09. Exide is carrying out research to make more powerful and yet compact, light weight, high performance and leak resistant batteries. |
| The company commands a 33 per cent market share in the overall domestic auto battery market, 90 per cent share in the automotive original equipment market and 50 per cent share in the industrial battery market. |
| Exide is currently increasing its manufacturing capacity of automotive batteries to 6 million from the present 4.8 million. |
| Similarly, the motorcycle battery capacity will be increased to 8 million from the existing 6 million and industrial battery production capacity will be enhanced to 1,000 million ampere hour from the existing 800 million ampere hour. |
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