India to Overtake Brazil as Sixth Largest Car Maker

Country to produce 3 million cars by the end of current financial year

 Driven by rising purchasing power and a spate of new launches, India will produce 3 million cars by the end of the fiscal, making it the world's sixth largest car manufacturing country in the world after South Korea, said senior officials in automobile companies. China tops the list with an annual production of 1.38 crore cars. Currently, India is the seventh largest carmaker after Brazil. The Indian car market, which produced 26.78 lakh cars in the April-February period, will notch up the sixth position due to phenomenal growth in sales this fiscal, beating the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers' (SIAM) earlier projection of India finding a place among the world's top six carmakers by 2015.
With several new launches set to drive up sales, India may produce 34.5 lakh cars in the new fiscal. "Actual sales are much higher than all our projections made in the past. The strong fundamental of the economy and new cars hitting the market are likely to keep the momentum going that should lead to a high growth of 14-16% in the next fiscal despite the high base of current fiscal," said Sugato Sen, senior director, SIAM.
Demand in the last fiscal was mainly driven by the new launches. "The demand for newly-launched cars is much higher than our estimates. Just two of our new cars — Alto K10 and Eeco — launched in 2010, forms over 15% of our million cars sold in this fiscal. Helped by rising incomes and buoyant economy, new cars will continue to drive growth in the next fiscal too," said Shashank
Srivastava, the chief general manager (marketing) of Maruti Suzuki.
Maruti's R3, Honda's Brio, Toyota's Liva and GM's Sail are among the 50 new cars, which are set to hit the market by FY12. Fresh capacities, which can produce an additional one million cars, will go on stream next year. Maruti Suzuki is coming up with a new 2.5-lakh cars plant in Haryana, while Renault's 2-lakh cars-a-year plant at Chennai is expected to come up in the new fiscal.