The next edition of India's biennial automobile show, Auto Expo, will be held from February 6-12, 2014 at Greater Noida, moving away from the traditional venue of Pragati Maidan.
The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) today said the change in timing and venue was mainly to avoid clash with the Detroit Auto Show and unavailability of Pragati Maidan. Traditionally, the auto expo is held in the first week of January.
"In the next Auto Expo, which will be held from February 6-12, we will be showing only vehicles and accessories at the India Expo Centre and Mart at Greater Noida," said Vishnu Mathur, director general, SIAM.
For the components, the exhibition will be held in a separate venue which is being still worked out, he added.
The Auto Expo 2014 will be much bigger in terms of exhibition space. "We will have 50,000 square metres of occupied space by exhibitors as compared to less than 40,000 square metre that we had this year's Auto Expo," said Sugato Sen, deputy director general, SIAM. In order to have a trial run ahead of the 2014 expo, SIAM will be organising a bus and utility vehicles show from February 15-18, 2013.
At the end of Auto Expo 2012, the organisers -- SIAM, Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) -- had said they were mulling to move the next edition of the biennial trade show out of Pragati Maidan to a more spacious 'world-class' location so that it can become the largest in the world.
