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According to a Reuters report this morning, General Motors has decided to stop selling cars in India. This effectively cancels “most” of the company’s billion dollar plan to build and sell low-cost cars in the country, first announced back in 2015. Currently, GM only markets and sells Chevrolet cars in India, but those operations will cease at the end of the year. The country has a population of 1.3 billion and is set to overtake Japan as the third-largest market in the world within the next ten years.
However, this decision comes as much less of a surprise upon learning that after twenty years in the market, Chevy holds less than one percent share of passenger car sales in India. But GM isn’t pulling out of all of its Indian operations entirely. The American automaker is keeping its Bangalore tech center open and turning its Talegaon assembly plant into an export-only affair.
The company’s other assembly plant in Halol is set to be sold to China-based SAIC Motor Corp—a joint venture partner of GM’s. In an interview, GM Chief of International Operations Stefan Jacoby said, “We are not giving up benefits India offers as a local cost manufacturing hub with an excellent supplier base which is extremely competitive.”
GM’s Indian exports—primarily to Mexico and Latin America—almost doubled to nearly 71,000 cars in the previous fiscal year. Considering the Talegaon plant has a capacity 130,000 vehicles per year, its recasting as an export plant should be feasible for the foreseeable future. In addition, Jacoby assures that the move will not impact GM Korea’s existing role as Chevy exporter to North America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Pakistan.
