Fiat will be introducing the Jeep brand this year in India beginning with the Grand Cherokee 2015 model. But to enhance its Indian manufacturing capabilities, Fiat Chrysler will be manufacturing the Renegade and another SUV in India.
Tata Motors is working towards adding two new SUVs to its current range of SUVs, the Q501 and Q502. One of them will be powered by the 1.5-litre Fiat engine, which will be shared with Jeep's Renegade. Both these SUVs won't just be sold in India, but will also be exported to other markets to bring down the cost and achieve numbers for the plant.
Jeep has already registered the Renegade brand name in India and it has begun talks with vendors too. Each of the brands is targeting to manufacture about 50,000 annual units for their new SUV. Fiat will be introducing another smaller SUV too under the Jeep brand, and this will be a B-segment SUV, which will compete with the Ford Ecosport.
The Renegade will be powered by a 1.5-litre multijet engine, which is the new engine Fiat is working on. As diesel engines up to 1.5-litre capacity available the excise benefit, Fiat is tweaking its existing 1.6-litre multijet for Indian market, reducing its capacity by 100cc.
All the four new SUVs from both the brands will make their first appearance in 2017 and the second SUV from each should be made available in 2018. This year, Tata Motors has already introduced the Bolt. The other launches include the Safari Storme facelift and one of the Kite models (mostly the sedan) should be made available around the festive season.
Source : MotorOctane
