Skoda, the car manufacturer from Czech Republic, which is now a subsidiary of the German auto giant, Volkswagen, is rumored to be working on a new SUV that could be brought to the market within 2013. The car maker is hoping that the sales figure of the firm is going to register a 50% growth in 2012. The Skoda Rapid has been highly successful and is already attracting a lot of bookings. According to the information received by Indian Drives from an executive of Skoda, Volkswagen group is working on modalities to set up an additional production line at the Aurangabad plant of the company, which will exclusively cater to manufacturing this latest SUV.
It is expected that the company is going to make an official announcement about this fresh investment within the next few months. The company has not disclosed any further information on this proposed new SUV, which it is planning to roll out by 2013. Presently, the SUVs that are most preferred by the Indian consumers include the Toyota Fortuner, Tata Safari, Mahindra Bolero and BMW X1.
Volkswagen Group had made the announcement of investing at least Rs.2,000 crore for the Indian market within 2012, which is going to be aimed at intensifying its capacity, launching new models and strengthening its research and developmental activities. For the time being, Volkswagen Group has got two manufacturing plants in the country, both of which are located in Maharashtra – one at Chakan, near Pune and the other one is at Aurangabad. Volkswagen is planning to increase the capacity of its Chakan plant from its existing capacity of 1.1 Lakh annual units to manufacturing 1.3 Lakh annual units within 2012. The Aurangabad plant is considerably smaller and presently manufactures only around 20,000 units annually.