Global auto major Ford on Wednesday said it would invest $142 million (Rs 757 crore )at its Chennai plant to manufacture a new compact sports utility vehicle named EcoSport. The company's wholly owned arm, Ford India, will roll out the product in the market later this year. “It really is a tremendous show of confidence on the team in Chennai," Ford India President and Managing Director Michael Boneham told reporters here.
He said the investment will be on equipment required for manufacturing the product, including dies and tools.
The capacity of the Chennai plant will remain 200,000 units annually.
The fresh investment will be over the $72 million (Rs 384 crore) the company is pumping into the plant to augment powertrain capacity.
"By the end of this, we would have invested $1.142 billion at the Chennai plant," Boneham said.
Ford is setting up a second plant at Sanand, in Gujarat, at an investment of $1 billion (Rs 5,300 crore). Commenting on the new SUV, Ford Asia-Pacific President Joe Hinrichs said: "We have promised to bring more than 50 new vehicles and powertrains in Asia and Africa by mid-decade and the all-new EcoSport continues to deliver on that pledge."
While the company has not disclosed details of the product, saying it would be shared at the time of market launch, it said the EcoSport is to be powered by a one-litre EcoBoost engine that "delivers power and performance that will rival a traditional 1.6 petrol engine..."
The EcoSport will make its global debut here and be sold in 100 markets around the world. This is the second of eight global models the company plans to bring to India by the middle of the decade.
Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally said, "This is the first compact SUV and we are launching it right at the heart of the compact (vehicles) market." Expressing confidence in growth of the Indian market, he said, "India is a very important market for us and we have announced eight new models would be launched by the middle of this decade." He said the global market is still robust and expects about 5 per cent growth consecutively in the next two years.
