MG Motor India to enter multi-purpose vehicle segment with Hector Plus
MG Motor India is gearing up to enter multi-purpose vehicle segment with Hector Plus slated to be launched next month, and plans to hire about 200 associates for its Halol plant to ramp up overall production to pre-Covid level, a top company executive said on Monday.
With supply chain constraints hampering ramping up of factory output, the company is also ‘hand-holding’ some of its tier-II and tier-III components suppliers, even providing financial support in order to meet customer demand.
“This week, we should start producing Hector Plus. We would be launching the product in the second week of July,” MG Motor India President and Managing Director Rajeev Chaba said.
Sharing the company’s strategy on the new model, he said it will be an extension of its existing SUV Hector.
“It is in the MPV category. What we are trying to do is Hector competes in the SUV category and Hector Plus in the MPV category for larger family use,” Chaba added.
Hector Plus will enter the multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) segment where the likes of Toyota Innova Crysta, Mahindra Marazzo and Maruti Suzuki XL6 play across different price categories.
“It has basically six seats, with two ‘captain seats’ in the middle row. In our market study we found that there are some customers who want captain seats in the middle and also a third row of seats, which is for two people where children of the family can also seat. This is what we will be launching,” he added.
Price wise, he said the new model will be costlier than Hector by about Rs 1 lakh.
Hector, currently, comes at a price range of Rs 12.74 lakh to Rs 17.73 lakh across variants.
Commenting on the company’s production plans after resuming operations following lockdown relaxation, Chaba said, “We were doing around 3,000 units pre-Covid approximately. This month we should be doing almost 2,500 units, which is 75-80 per cent of our recovery”.