BMW intends to maintain its top position in the Indian luxury car market. The German automaker has planned a slew of launches in the coming months, which will help it to keep a comfortable lead over its arch rival from Ingolstadt. These upcoming launches are facelifts of existing vehicles and will help BMW in keeping the buzz alive. While Audi India commenced CKD operations of the Q7 today, BMW plans to locally assemble the 7-Series in India starting next year. The new 7-Series will be launched in March 2013.
BMW will launch the facelifted X6 next month, while the facelifted X1 will be launched in January 2013. The luxury automaker plans to expand its CKD product range. Currently BMW assembles the X1, X3, 3-Series and 5-Series in India. Two more models will be added to this list, including the 1-Series and 7-Series in 2013. BMW currently has a capacity to churn out 11,000 units from its Chennai plant, which can be increased as per requirements.
BMW will also hike prices of its cars by up to 10% from next year, owing to an increase in input costs. However the price of the new 7-Series is expected to drop marginally due to reduced CKD duty. The BMW 7-Series will become the most expensive vehicle to be locally assembled in India. The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is a SKD (semi-knocked down), while the Audi A8 is difficult to locally assemble due to the high amount of aluminum usage. Jaguar has no plans to locally assemble the XJ just yet, the Tata Motors owned company will start CKD operations of the XF next year.
