Skoda held an annual press conference at their headquarters in Mlada Boleslav today to discuss their 2017 year and also their future plan. We were expecting to get Skoda’s detailed plan for India, but Skoda announced that the official concrete announcement will be made sometime in the middle of this year.
Volkswagen Group, the parent company of Skoda, has given a responsibility to the Czech carmaker to develop a new entry-level platform for vehicles in the emerging economy market starting with India. Skoda considers this a tough challenge since competition is fierce in our market especially in that segment. However, Skoda assured that they have continued on the investigation of the same and final decisions will be made by the middle of this year. When everything conceptualises, Skoda plans to have vehicles based on the new platform on the Indian streets by 2021.
They will take over the entry-level MQB A0 platform for the said project and develop it further in order to enter the volume segment. This will help Volkswagen Group to get a huge boost in sales in a highly demanding market like ours. The new entry-level product could also spawn B+ hatchback segment to rival the likes of the Maruti Suzuki Baleno and Hyundai Elite i20. Additionally, this platform is also expected to underpin the production version of the Polo based T-Cross SUV that will be unveiled next year. The new platform will also be compliant with the NCAP ratings in order to maintain the quality characteristic associated with the German brand.
This new platform will help VW Group to capitalise their presence in the Indian market and achieve their plans of 5 per cent market share by 2025. More details will be revealed in the coming months. So keep watching this space.
