Leading carmaker Hyundai Motor India Ltd on Monday announced plans to roll out a CNG version of its bread-and-butter hatchback Santro by this year-end or early 2008.The car, with a factory fitted CNG kit and the option of a second fuel (petrol), would be manufactured at the company's existing plant in Chennai, HMIL managing director H S Lheem said at the Chennai Port after flagging-off the first shipment of 'Getz Prime' to the European market.
Passenger car leader Maruti Udyog had last year introduced WagonR duo, which could be run on both LPG as well as petrol.
The CNG version of Santro would be a bi-fuel car, Lheem said, adding that a new small car was also on the anvil from HMIL in the last quarter of this year.
On the export of Getz Prime, he said this is the third car after Santro (Atoz Prime) and Accent to be exported from India to the European market. Getz Prime, 4,000 units of which were shipped to Germany, would soon be launched in India too, he added.
HMIL expects to ship 40,000 units of the car in the current fiscal and increase the export of the 'Made in India' Getz to 1,00,000 units by 2008.
He also said Hyundai would invest an additional Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion) in India by 2010. The current level of investment of the Korean car major was about Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion), a company official said.
He said the company would be exporting about 1,35,000 cars this year, against 1,13,000 units shipped last year.
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