Toyota has committed to building a new factory in India through a $400 million investment as it celebrates 25 years of operations in the country.
This new factory will be established through the Japanese car manufacturer’s local Toyota Kirloskar Motor joint venture and be positioned near its existing two factories in the southern state of Karnataka. Toyota says the factory will have the capacity to build more than 100,000 vehicles annually and create 2,000 new jobs. It will increase the brand’s overall capacity to 410,000 units.
“The Indian market has always been of great importance to us,” Toyota Asia Region chief executive Masahiko Maeda said. “We are confident that with the new investments in India, we will further elevate TKM’s role in our global vision for a more promising future by creating sustainable mobility solutions that enrich people’s lives worldwide.”
Toyota expects to finish and have the factory up and running by 2026. It has not announced the full range of vehicles that will be built at the site but has confirmed that one of the models to be built there will be the Innova HyCross. The Japanese marque took off the covers to the third-generation Innova this time last year. It is powered by a 2.0-liter petrol engine supplemented by a hybrid electric motor and mated to a CVT, although variants driven solely by a small-capacity petrol engine are also available.
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The brand’s local sales have jumped thanks in part to its partnership with Suzuki where it tweaks vehicles developed by Indian partner Maruti and sells them as its own. Reuters notes that roughly two-thirds of Toyota’s current production capacity is used by Maruti Suzuki to build vehicles for the two companies.
