Japanese giant Toyota Motor said yesterday it plans to invest US$350 million to build a new plant in India and develop a small car for one of the world’s fastest-growing motoring markets.
The automaker’s second plant, which aims to start production in 2010, will go up on the site of the Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) facility on the outskirts of the southern Indian IT hub of Bangalore.
It will manufacture an annual 100,000 passenger vehicles, taking TKM’s overall capacity to more than 160,000 units, the company said in a statement.
Toyota and other carmakers are competing to increase their share of a market where automobile sales are forecast to reach 2 million units by 2010, from 1.4 million last year, as the economy expands and middle-class incomes rise.
Automakers including Volkswagen and General Motors plan to invest billions of dollars in India, where the Tata group in January unveiled the world’s cheapest car for US$2,500, promising to revolutionize travel for millions.
“The Indian automobile market — large, medium and small — is getting crowded, but it is still a large and growing market,” automobile industry analyst Murad Ali Baig said.
“International carmakers are also finding India to be a useful base for global production,” he said.
The Nikkei Shimbun business daily reported in February that Toyota plans to price its Indian-made small car at ¥800,000 (US$7,862).
Japan’s largest automaker plans to invest 14 billion rupees (US$354.2 million) in the new plant, the company said.
“Plans call for the second TKM plant to produce passenger vehicles, including the Corolla as well as a new strategic small car, which is being developed with the aim of meeting the broad needs of customers in India,” the statement said.
Toyota said the move was in response to “the market expansion that has accompanied the development of motorization in India.”
It owns 89 percent of its joint venture with Kirloskar, which holds the remaining 11 percent.
Last year, it sold 54,000 vehicles in India, but lags far behind smaller rival Suzuki Motor, which entered the market in the 1980s.
Suzuki, which holds a majority stake in Maruti Udyog, the country’s largest auto firm, logged sales of 764,842 vehicles as it rode on the popularity of small, inexpensive cars.
Analysts forecast India will continue to be one of the world’s fastest-expanding vehicle markets as middle-class incomes keep climbing and the government builds new highways to criss-cross the nation.
Toyota’s late entry into the Indian small car market wouldn’t be a handicap, Baig said.
“Toyota may take time to decide, but once it does, it moves very fast,” he said. “It would have done a very thorough market survey to find a niche it can fit in. It won’t be just another small car.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a
RSS