Ford likely to make India hub for small car development and production

Ford plans to make India a hub for the development and production of a new small car range (codenamed project B562). A report from the Economic Times suggests that this project is a part of the American automaker plan to shift focus from Europe, where demand for its vehicles has reduced significantly, to more developing markets like India where a surge in demand is expected over the next few years. 

Ford intends to use its upcoming Sanad plant in Gujarat to produce three vehicles based on the platform being developed from this project. The vehicles are expected to be a compact hatchback, a mid-sized premium sedan and a sub four metre sedan of which it is believed that the compact sedan is still believed to be in the consideration stage.    

The American automaker aims to produce over two lakh vehicles based on the B562 platform and much like recently launched EcoSport, it aims to export over 30 per cent of the vehicles to various markets where is there demand for such mass market cars. The report suggests that the company aims to have a production localisation level of 90 per cent in a bid to price the cars as competitively as possible.   

As the name suggests, the platform is mostly the B platform on which its global vehicles like the Fiesta, Focus and EcoSport are based. It aims to have at least 12-13 vehicles based on this platform over the course of the next few years and we expect that the cars being developed under the B562 programme will be a part of this line up. The aim of such a move is to have vehicles across the segment in order to cater to a much wider audience. It is likely that the cars being developed under project B562 is the next generation Figo and two sedan derivatives in various sizes. 

With more and more manufacturers entering the mass market hatchback segment with multiple offerings, it seems like a lucrative step for Ford to develop and complete Project B562 as soon as possible. 

Source: ET