Toyota’s New Entry Family Car (codename 801L or EFC ) will named Toyota Etios,unveil in Auto Expo 2010
Toyota’s New Entry Family Car (codename 801L or EFC ) will named Toyota Etios,unveil in Auto Expo 2010
The Indian unit of Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) said Wednesday it has raised its sales forecast for 2009 to 54,000 vehicles due to a revival in Asia’s third-biggest automobile market and higher demand for a recently-introduced model.
“With the success of the Fortuner and better growth in the market, we have increased our guidance,” Sandeep Singh, deputy managing director for marketing at Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd., told reporters at the launch of the diesel Land Cruiser Prado sport-utility vehicle.
The auto maker sold 51,800 vehicles in 2008.
Toyota Kirloskar Managing Director Hiroshi Nakagawa had said Aug. 24 the company’s local sales would remain nearly flat this year at 52,000 vehicles.
Car sales in India started rising in February this year, aided by several federal government stimulus packages and a cut in lending rates by commercial banks.
Toyota Kirloskar’s car and SUV sales rose 9.5% during April-November 2009 to 38,921 vehicles. That compares with a 21% rise in local industry sales to 1.22 million passenger vehicles in the same period.
Singh said the company’s sales in 2010 are likely to grow by 15% to 20%.
Toyota Kirloskar, which is 89% owned by Toyota and the remainder by India’s Kirloskar group, currently produces the Innova multipurpose vehicle, Corolla sedan and the Fortuner SUV at its factory outside Bangalore.
It also imports and markets the Land Cruiser and Land Cruiser Prado SUVs as well as the Camry sedan. The new diesel Prado model will cost INR5.27 million at dealerships in Bangalore and will add to the existing gasoline version of the SUV.
Toyota plans also to start selling its first small car in India by late-2010. The car will be produced at a new INR32 billion factory that is being built in the complex of the existing plant.
Toyota, which had recently announced that it will be showcasing a concept version of EFC (Entry Family Car) codenamed ‘EFC800L’ at the Delhi Auto Expo, is likely to christen the model as ‘Etios’ which means ‘the origin of’.
The five-door hatchback car which will be launched by the end of 2010 or early 2011, would be a super-hatch and would be priced in the range of Rs. 5-7 lakh. The small car for India, to be launched by December 2010, is expected to be rolled out with a 1.2-litre as well as 1.3-litre engine (both petrol and diesel) from Toyota’s new plant at Bidadi (having an initial capacity of 70,000 units), near Bangalore in Karnataka, though nothing has been revealed by the company yet. The premium compact car is being developed in Japan with considerable inputs from TKM and will meet all the quality parameters required by Toyota. Toyota intends to maintain the quality of its cars, thus it will introduce its notchback model first. The hatchback model, which will sell in volumes, will come later.
“We will showcase the concept of the car in the upcoming Delhi Auto Expo. We are ready with the concept model of both the compact and the sedan versions of the car,” Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) senior managing director, Akira Okabe told a group of visiting Indian journalists in Tokyo. Though he declined to divulge the name of the compact car, Mr Okabe said it is internally code named as ‘EFC’. Asked about the version in which the company is likely to roll out the car initially, he said: “We can launch both the hatchback and the sedan together but nothing has been finalised as yet.” Okamoto also confirmed that at this moment the new small car being developed by Toyota for emerging markets such as India will be the cheapest-ever made by the Japanese company.
According to Toyota engineers, the EFC will offer class-leading space at the back and has been designed with Indian consumers in mind. India is the lead country for the EFC and will be the main global production base, followed by Brazil. The compact car, which will also be catering to the overseas markets, will have a localisation of 70 per cent initially and would be scaled up further to 90 per cent by 2011. Even though Toyota prepares to make India a hub for its small cars, it has ruled out any plans to bring in a second small car from group company Daihatsu. Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) will manufacture about 70,000 units of the Etios per annum, to begin with, and will aim for a 10 per cent market share in the Indian small cars segment by end-2010.
“To begin with we will be manufacturing 70,000 units of the compact car and are looking at a 10 per cent market share within one year of its release,” deputy managing director TKM Sandeep Singh told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of diesel variant of Land Cruiser Prado in Bangalore.
source : WheelsUnplugged and WSJ
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