The automatic transmission version of General Motors India's new Chevrolet Cruze has a Bangalore connection, though this city is far away from GM's production centres. The automatic version of Cruze was launched here on Tuesday.
The car is priced at Rs. 13.45 lakh, ex-showroom, Delhi.
Addressing presspersons, Rohit Paranjpe, Director, Power Train Engineering, GM India, said starting with 250 engineers, the engineering centre had grown to 700 now and more hiring was planned to match growth. The centre has a section dedicated to automatic transmission, a concept pioneered by GM in the U.S. in 1939, he said.
“The design and validation work done here is in coordination with centres in the U.S., Latin America, China, Korea and Australia and is important in bringing out new variants, including hybrid cars of the future and fuel cells to power them,” Mr. Paranjpe said. While 90 per cent of cars in the U.S. ran with automatic transmission, it was close to 50 per cent in China. GM's transmission had powered other models such as Rolls Royce, BMW, Ferrari, Jaguar and Volvo. The automatic gear Cruze had 75 per cent of its designing done in India. While fuel efficiency might be a hitch with automatic transmission, there was ‘consistent efficiency' he added.
Karl Slym, President and Managing Director, GM India, said the company's plants at Talegaon in Maharashtra and Hallol in Gujarat were now gearing up to work additional shifts to cope with anticipated demand for smaller cars. “We expect a 20 per cent growth in the automatic gear cars market through next year. The $1 billion investment we announced for India covers the Bangalore engineering centres and capacity addition in the manufacturing plants. Our total design and development spend across the globe is around $60 million since 2003,” he said.
