Maruti Suzuki announces Electric SUV to be manufactured in Gujarat

AHMEDABAD : Maruti Suzuki on December 6 announced that its upcoming Electric SUV will be manufactured in Gujarat, and a new plant will be added to the company’s existing manufacturing facility in Hansalpur, nearly 90 km from Ahmedabad.

Suzuki Motor Gujarat Private Ltd (SMG), which runs the car manufacturing plant at Hansalpur, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maruti Suzuki and commenced operation in February 2017.

“Our first EV, an SUV, will be launched in the next financial year of 2024-25. It will come out from SMG’s Gujarat plant. At present, the entire SMG facility at Hansalpur has three plants – plant A, B and C. Now, to manufacture the EV, a new plant, also called a production line, will be added there,” Maruti Suzuki Executive Director (Corporate Affairs) Rahul Bharti told reporters. The upcoming EV SUV, to be produced here at the SMG plant, will be exported too, he added.

In March 2022, SMG’s parent firm Suzuki Motor Corporation signed an MoU with the Gujarat government to invest Rs 3,100 crore in the Hansalpur plant for EV manufacturing.

“Our EV concept car has already been unveiled. It will be a high-specification SUV having 550 km range (on a single charge) and a 60-kilowatt-hour battery,” he said, adding that no specific number has been finalised yet about the number of units to be rolled out from the Gujarat plant.

In another announcement, the company said the SMG plant has surpassed the milestone of 3 million cumulative production. The three-millionth car was rolled out from the plant on December 4.

This Gujarat facility of Maruti Suzuki has an annual production capacity of 7.5 lakh units, and vehicles manufactured here are sold in both domestic as well as export markets. The company manufactures Baleno, Swift, Dzire, Fronx and Tour S models at this facility, Bharti said