Toyota to consider Daihatsu for small car

Toyota Motor Corp, which plans to roll out a small car in India from 2010, may tap affiliate mini-vehicle maker Daihatsu Motor to help reach its target of 10 per cent of the Indian market, a newspaper reported on Friday.

Toyota, which now makes the Corolla and the Innova multi-utility in a plant near Bangalore, on Thursday said it would start construction of a new plant with an annual capacity of 100,000 units to make a new compact car and other vehicles.

"In this project we are proceeding on our own. But for future projects we would like to make use of the strength of Daihatsu," Akira Okabe, senior managing director of Toyota Motor, told the paper at the ground-breaking in Bangalore.

Toyota was finalising the design of its small car for the Indian market, and more details of the product would be available by year-end, the paper cited him as saying. Toyota, which has a capacity of 60,000 units at its existing Indian plant, sold 52,000 vehicles in 2007 in India, where small cars make up two-thirds of a passenger vehicle market that is forecast to grow to more than 2 million units in sales by 2010.

Top vehicle maker Tata Motors Ltd is scheduled to launch the Nano, the world's cheapest car at about $2,500, later in the year. Bajaj Auto is building a similarly priced small car with Renault and Nissan Motor Co.

Source - Motorbeam