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Mumbai, Aug 10: Spread over 300 acres of land, the second manufacturing plant of General Motors India at Talegaon in Maharashtra will also house a small plantation of Jatropha. This is in addition to the 80 hectares of land that the company is planning to cultivate on the wasteland in Gujarat and is in the process of getting into an agreement with Gujarat-based Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI).
The company is in the process of testing six of its vehicles including the discontinued Opel brand Corsa, Chevrolet Aveo and Optra on bio-diesel derived from Jatropha seeds.
“We will be completing our phase I tests by December end and in phase II, would be nurturing Jatropha cultivation,” said P Balendran, vice-president, corporate affairs, GM India. He added that the vehicles have successfully done more than 40,000 kms already.
The bio-diesel project is driven by research and development (R&D) team General Motors, Detroit and is supported by GM India engineering department.
The Talegaon plant is scheduled to commence operations this September and will have an initial capacity of 140,000 units per annum which could be further ramped up depending on future requirements. The company plans to use the initial capacity for manufacturing Chevrolet Spark. With this new plant the total capacity of GM India will grow to 2, 25,000 vehicles annually, including the existing plant in Halol, Gujarat capacity of 85,000 units per annum.
Other auto manufacturers like Mercedes Benz India, Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) are also running similar projects. While Mercedes Benz has already completed first stage of the study and conducted tests on its C-class sedans and now tied up with ADM and Bayer in a tripartite venture to study the commercial feasibility. M&M has expressed its intentions to dominant this category with its vehicles capable enough of running on bio-diesel. Tata Motors is running its employee buses in Pune on bio-diesel and plans to take the use of both ethanol and bio-diesel to other Tata companies as well.
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