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Volkswagen may roll out LCVs next year

BS Corporate in New Delhi

Volkswagen AG will launch flexible variants of its light commercial vehicle, LT, from March next year, company executives said on Tuesday.

To begin with, the company will import ambulances and armoured vehicles based on the LT platform as completely-built-units and market them through its Indian partners.

At a later stage, local assembly of knocked-down kits will begin, followed by localisation, the executives said, adding government permission will be sought for importing these vehicles by the end of this month.

"We will be in a position to start local assembly of the armoured vehicles after we sell 150 units. We will then transfer the armouring technology to India. We will be looking at maximum local content," Harold Franke, export sales manager (commercial vehicles) of Volkswagen AG, said.

The imported vehicles will be serviced by local dealers of Skoda Auto India, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volkswagen.

Technology transfer for the ambulances and armoured vehicle will be done by Volkswagen's German partners, Christian Miesen GmbH and MBB, respectively.

The representative for Volkswagen in India, Ashok Jain said the auto-maker would follow up the launch of with more commercial vehicles in India such as the Caravelle, Multivan and Transporter.

Volkswagen sources maintained that a separate project for passenger car manufacturing was in the pipeline.

Rajasthan government sources, who were here to attend a conference organised by the vehicle-maker confirmed that land had been earmarked for the company at Bhiwadi, and a proposal including tax benefits, was pending approval from Volkswagen headquarters in Germany.

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