New Delhi: Emboldened by rise in sales after partnership with Suzuki Motor, the Toyota Motor has proposed setting up its third car manufacturing plant in India to scale up the production. The new plant is likely to come up at Bidadi, a town in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, where the company already has two manufacturing units.
Toyota Motor, which is the world’s biggest car maker, wants to optimise the production capacity of its existing plant in India from 80,000-1,20,000 vehicles a year to 2 lakh units. The plant’s proposed initial capacity would expand Toyota’s existing manufacturing capacity in India by as much as 30% from 400,000 units currently.
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Officials of Toyota said that the company was working on a new sport utility vehicle (SUV) for the Indian market. The new SUV may be launched in early 2026 and be an anchor product for the new factory, said the person who deals in the company’s plans.
Sales of Toyota’s cars in India have went up after the company struck a global partnership deal with Suzuki under which the two Japanese car makers take some vehicles originally developed by their partner, then tweak and sell under their own brands to fill out their product line-up.
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Cars originally from Maruti Suzuki’s stable such as the Glanza hatchback and Urban Cruiser Hyryder SUV now account for 40% of Toyota’s India sales. As part of the deal, around 2/3rd of Toyota’s current production capacity is used by Maruti Suzuki to build vehicles for both car makers. The carmaker expects a record domestic sales by the end of this year. The expansion of plants in India is part of the company’s strategy to boost production capacity to 500,000 vehicles per year before the end of the decade, which include the vehicles to be supplied to Suzuki.
The company’s expansion strategy comes at a time when it is seeing slowing growth in markets like Europe and North America and competition in Southeast Asia from Chinese players. The new C-segment SUV, codenamed 340D, that Toyota is working on will fill a gap between its mid-sized Urban Cruiser Hyryder and bigger multi-purpose vehicle Innova Hycross.
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Officials said that Toyota has planned introducing a ‘mini’ Land Cruiser in India. The company, however, does not foresee a large amount of sales is coming years and hence the final decision on the new vehicle were not taken as yet. If Toyota does decide to press ahead with the model, parts would be imported for assembly in India, they said.
