Wednesday, June 22, 2011
By Pranjal Gera
Renault to reveal its new hatchback at Auto Expo 2012
The French Auto maker Renault left a soft hint and anticipation earlier this morning with the news of its forthcoming hatchback that will be revealed during the Auto Expo 2012. The hatchback has especially been designed for the Indian market and keeping the Indian roads in mind. The Research, development and designing of the car will take place in the company’s R&D Centre in Mumbai.
The hatchback is likely to hit the market earlier January 2012 and will compete with B and B+ Segments. The Company aims at giving competition to Maruti Suzuki’s successful hatchback Maruti Swift and super hatch Volkswagen Polo.
The Company also plans to launch its new SUV called Renault Koleos by the end of this year. With very high thoughts of achieving a grip on the Indian market, the company is also set to launch another SUV named Duster just after the release of its untitled hatchback in 2012.
The Company also made it clear that the production of the cars will take place at the Alliance plant in Chennai sharing the area with Nissan, where the company has committed a huge investment of Rs. 4500 Crore by the year 2015. The plant is completely operational and will soon start delivering around 4- 6 lac cars a year. Since the plant is of flexible type, it will produce cars from both Nissan and Renault on a single line. So far, the plant has successfully rolled out Nissan’s hatchback ‘Nissan Micra’ and Renault’s luxury icon ‘Renault Fluence’ which has though received a ‘fair’ response from the Indian Market.
Some of the popular hatchback models in the Indian auto market are Ford Figo, Hyundai i10 and Chevrolet Beat. Apart from these popular models, cars going to hit the Indian roads this year are Toyota Etios Liva, Maruti Cervo and New Ford Fiesta.
