Hyundai Motor flags off i20s to Europe; Indian launch by jan 2009

Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL) has rolled out from its Irrungattukottai plant the first batch of all new i20 cars, premiered at the Paris Motor Show last month. The maiden consignment, comprising 2,820 cars, has just been flagged off from the Chennai port for Europe.

i20 is considered a highly significant addition to the new generation of Hyundai vehicles identified by the ‘i’ prefix. It is designed at the company’s European design centre at Russelsheim, Germany, and is designed and engineered to meet the European tastes and needs. It is exclusively manufactured at the company’s Chennai facility.

HMIL makes i20 in three variants — 1.2 litre, 1.4 litre and 1.6 litre — in both petrol and diesel versions. The first export consignment comprises a good mixture of these.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, H. S. Leem, Managing Director, said HMIL could launch i20 in the domestic market in January next. He said HMIL initially was targeting to export 6,000 units of i20s by October. The global financial meltdown in its wake had seen some distributors cancel their orders and still others postpone their buys. This had forced HMIL to make lower initial shipment, he pointed out. Shipments would pick-up in the coming days in the wake of Christmas-eve orders, he said.

The company had fixed an export target of 1.20 lakh i20s next year.

He admitted that the global meltdown would hit 25 per cent of the company’s export sales. Mr. Leem also indicated that HMIL would launch a new model by 2011 that would be smaller than its Santro.

Diesel version

He indicated that HMIL could launch the diesel version of i10 next year. HMIL was giving more importance to cost saving and weight shedding.

In this context, he said a team of R&D people had come here to work on various aspects of controlling costs. The company had also introduced a novel reward programme (Rs. 100 per every one gram weight loss) for employees who came out with innovative solutions to reduce the weight of the vehicle.