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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