Ford B500 project will be the new Honda City competitor

Ford will inject INR 5,000 crores in its existing Chennai R&D centre to develop new products on the B500 project. This will be the first major project where majority of the work will be done by the Indian R&D centre. The sedan will be competing with the Honda City and will be launched in 2018 and this will also have another MPV too.
The new Indian product development R&D centre will be one of the largest in the Asia-Pacific region and will not give input just for the Indian car market but other products too as per the company’s “One Ford” strategy. Experts suggest to ET that the product development will enhance the localization percentage and also help the company to reduce imports.
Mark Fields mentioned in an interview, “There’s a tremendous engineering talent here, and we want to tap into that and grow our product development capability here methodically over a period of time.” Mark Fields was here in India recently, to inaugurate Ford’s newly set-up plant in Sanand.

With its increase in investment, the American auto giant will be increasing its India investment by 50%. This cash-in flow comes in 10 months after Mark Fields promised Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be a part of the Make In India campaign. The announcement for this investment is likely to be made in the second half of 2015 as the company is about to sign the deal with the Tamil Nadu state government in the next few months. Post the set-up of the new R&D centre, Ford’s centre will have a workforce of around 10,000 people.