Hyundai Motor India temporarily shutters 750,000 units per annum Chennai plant

Both integrated manufacturing facilities have stopped operations from today until the Tamil Nadu government notifies it of resumption of activity.

By Autocar Professional Bureau

23 Mar 2020

43520 Views

The assembly of the body via spot welding is done entirely by robots.

The side assembly line is finalised by the human workforce.

Hyundai puts together the engine and transmission from scratch at the engine shop.

Hyundai develops and manufactures the AMT gearboxes in-house.

Due to delicate processes involved in the engine shop, humans are preferred due to their dexterity.

The assembly shop is where the various car parts are finally put together to make a working car.

The Electro Deposition coat that has become universal for the modern automotive paint shop.

The engine, transmission, suspension and exhaust get married to the body in the assembly shop.

The assembly shop has two lines, the side line handles the doors and the main line handles the body.

A batch of production-ready Santros ready for despatch to showrooms across the country.

Hyundai Motor India temporarily shutters 750,000 units per annum Chennai plant

The Chennai factory also stamps 17 new body panels for the new Creta. The model is put together at Hyundai’s Plant 1, which will churn out the last few examples of the outgoing Creta, in addition to the Venue and i20.

To enhance structural rigidity and keep weight to a minimum, Hyundai has also upped the high-strength steel content to 74.3 percent with the bare shell now weighing in at a smidge under 300kg.

On March 7, the first 2020 model Creta rolled off the production line at Sriperumbudur.

In line with the concerted action being taken by the Indian automotive industry, Hyundai Motor India, the No. 2 passenger vehicle player in the country with 17.44 market share, has announced that it will "be taking the preventive counter-measure of suspending its manufacturing operations at the Chennai facility from Monday, 23rd March 2020 till further notice to stop the spread of coronavirus."

The carmaker says it will await further notifications from State Government to resume plant operations.

Hyundai has two plants at Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. While Plant 1 has a manufacturing capacity of 330,000 units per annum, Plant 2 has 420,000. Each of the two factories sends0 out a new car once every 33 seconds.

On March 16, a bullish-on-diesel Hyundai had launched the 2020 Creta SUV at Rs 999,000, for which it already has over 15,000 bookings in hand and over half of them for the diesel variants.

On March 7, Hyundai Motor India had upgraded the plant in preparation for the second-generation Creta’s production. Additions include a set of robots to assemble the roof section of the variants that get the large panoramic roof. The Chennai factory also stamps 17 new body panels for the new Creta. The model is put together at Hyundai’s Plant 1, which will churn out the last few examples of the outgoing Creta, in addition to the Venue and i20.

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