GM’s powertrain facility at the Taegaon plant has crossed the 1,00,000 production mark on December 13th, 2012. This achievement can be attributed to the growing popularity of the Chevrolet Cruze and Beat, and the encouraging response to the recently launched Chevrolet SAIL U-VA.
Talegaon facility is quite important as it is the only facility from GM that produces both diesel and petrol powertrain together. The facility was made operational in November 2010 and was built with a investment of US $230 million. The plant has initial annual capacity of about 160,000 engines and has been designed to accommodate further expansion. In little over two years plant has produced over 100,000 engines milestone at the same time maintaining quality and standard of the engines produced.
Commenting on the occasion, President and Managing Director of General Motors India, Mr. Lowell Paddock said that this is a proud moment for all GM employees at GM India. Crossing the milestone of producing 100,000 engines at the powertrain plant is the token of GM’s commitment towards Indian market. With the launch of new products like SAIL U-VA and the upcoming SAIL and Enjoy GM will be ramping up the production at the plant. He further added that they are looking towards achieving several other milestones, as company marches ahead in offering best cars in the respective segments of the auto market.
The facility currently produces TCDi engines in configurations of 1.0 litre and 1.3 litre capacities other than the gasoline engines that arrives in 1.0 litre and 1.2 litre capacities. To compensate the growing demand of its products along with the expansion of its product portfolio with SAIL Hatchback and Enjoy MPV, the plant has been built so as to accommodate production of another 14,000 engines per year depending upon the requirements.
It is to be noted that the Talegaon plant was recently recognized by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency for Energy Reduction Progress. The plant is among the 54 GM plants across the globe that compiles with the voluntary energy reduction challenge that was set up by U.S Environmental Protection Agency. The plant was able to cut down its energy consumption by 12 percent in less than just two years. This has helped the plant to avoid production of about 4,419 tons of CO2 that it could have discharged into the environment.