Ford India has big plans for the future, despite what Wards Auto calls “two lackluster decades in the market.” The regional arm of Ford Motor Company is consolidating from two separate entities into one, and serving as a development base for a new platform that will underpin a majority of the automaker’s vehicles for emerging markets.
According to Wards, Ford India – the regional entity that tackles local production, sales and exports – is merging with Ford Motor Ltd., which handles product engineering and information technology services. Meanwhile, the forthcoming vehicle platform is being developed by Ford India’s Global Engineering Center, and is flexible enough that it ought to enable production cost savings of around 8 to 10 percent.
Ford India’s plans promise to transform the regional arm into a development, engineering, and production hub in its own right, with the automaker targeting some 50 global markets to receive India-built Ford passenger vehicles in the future. Last year, Ford CEO Mark Fields said of the country: “There is tremendous engineering talent here and we want to tap into that to grow our product-development capability. India fits into our global objective. That is why we are making all these long-term plans for our Indian sojourn.”
No Comments yet