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| Audi X8 |
The Germany luxury car maker Audi is planning to start a second manufacturing shift at its existing plant in India. The move will be taken in a bid to meet the upward shooting demand for the luxury cars in the Indian market.
The addition of a new shift at its current facility can be seen as a big step ahead in the direction of achieving its aim of registering a double-fold increase in its sales in the Indian market by year 2015. The luxury car segment in India is expected to grow by more than 200 percent to 20,000 units a year by 2015 and Audi is aiming to contribute more than 30 percent in the total sales of this segment by that time.
At present, Audi is the third-largest luxury car maker in the luxury car segment in India. It is expected that the second shift will be started at the company's Aurangabad factory. The start of a new shift will take the production capacity of the plant to 3,000 units from existing capacity of 2,000 units. The company is performing considerably well in the Indian market in this calendar year as it has sold about 1,876 units in the first eight months of this year as against 1,658 units sold in the last calendar year. The German auto giant is planning to sell as many as 3,000 units of its cars in the Indian market in the year 2010.
According to a statement given by Mr Michael Perschke,Operations Head at Audi India, the brand-Audi is not desperately following the comparatively bigger rivals such as BMW and Mercedes, but the company would prefer to be the most aspirational brand rather than a market leader in volumes. He also added that the growth of the company has been faster than its expectations, in India.
