Hyundai Motor India Limited on Tuesday launched a diesel and an automatic variant of its premium compact hatchback, the i20. The 1.4-litre CRDi diesel variant is priced at Rs 6.2 lakh-Rs 7.2 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The automatic variant of 1.4 litre petrol starts at Rs 7.31 lakh and the top-end variant will cost Rs 7.72 lakh in Delhi. About 12,000 units of the 1.2-litre petrol i20 were sold by Hyundai, whose starting price is Rs 4.8 lakh.
Being India’s largest car exporter, Hyundai Motor will shift part of the production of its i20 model to one of its facilities in Turkey, the Czech Republic or Slovakia to take production closer to its large overseas markets such as Germany, France, Italy and the UK. Hyundai i20 had been designed especially to meet the European cunsumers.
As vicky.in already reported you, HMIL is benefited mostly from its exports to Europe which continues to grow despite a slowdown in the sector. The company is receiving a huge number of export orders, mostly of i10 and i20 models. Hyundai, which uses India as an export base for its small cars, shipped 24,251 units to Europe. Hyundai India expects to sell around 5.8 lakh cars, out of which nearly 3 lakh cars will be exported including to some European countries. Logistics costs and import taxes add 10-15% to the price of cars exported from India.
While India will remain as the main production hub for the car and the European orders will be met from the new production facility. A nearly three-week-long strike by workers at Hyundai’s Chennai plant in April and May led to a 5% drop in production. Thus the company has decided to shift production of some models to other manufacturing sites, forcing the company to re-think on its export target.
The i20 hatchback is selling around 72,000 units since the car’s launch in December last year. About 60,000 of these were exported.