Tata Motors-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has no plans to set up a manufacturing facility in India to make premium cars, as the country currently is not a market for them, its CEO Ralf Speth said here on Tuesday.
“Localisation is a step-by-step process. Manufacturing is always a possibility in India. It will depend on India developing its economy. At this moment, India is not a market for premium cars in terms of volumes that justify building a plant there,” he said.
“If it were to explode in terms of GDP and come closer to the Chinese market of 24 million cars a year, we can think about a unit in India,” he said.
“The clear task is to win and in the segments we are competing in, we are very well positioned,” he said, adding that plans are a little way off for the firm, which currently assembles cars as completely knocked down units at its Pune plant, to manufacture them in India.
He lauded the Group’s then chairman Ratan Tata for saving two iconic British brands — Jaguar and Land Rover — from oblivion.
Speth, who has been at the helm of one of the automotive industry’s biggest turnarounds, believes the luxury brands were able to flourish under Tata Motors’ ownership as a result of the vision of Tata.