M&M to increase XUV500 output to 5k units a month by Sept-Oct

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Homegrown auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) will be increasing the monthly production of its hot-selling sports utility vehicle XUV500 to 5,000 units by around September-October.

The firm that had increased output of the model to 4,000 units a month in May is trying to meet the increased demand after it opened bookings of the vehicles across India this month.

"We have been gradually increasing the production of XUV500. It has touched 4,000 units a month now and the next step is to take it to 5,000 units by September-October," M&M chief executive, Automotive Division, Pravin Shah told PTI.

The company re-opened bookings for XUV500 from this month and said the vehicle would be made available across the country, including the 19 cities where it had been launched earlier. M&M had said nine months production capacity has been sold out for the XUV500.

After launching the vehicle on September 29 last year, the company had temporarily suspended new bookings in October as four months production of over 8,000 units was sold out within just 10 days.

The vehicle was available only in five cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Pune then.

In the second phase, M&M re-opened bookings for a limited period of 10 days from January 25 this year in 19 cities in India and had received over 25,000 applications but only 7,200 were selected through a lottery.

The XUV500 is priced between Rs 11.58 lakh and Rs 14.11 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

Commenting on the sales growth for this fiscal, Shah said the company is looking to do better than the industry, which SIAM pegged at 10-12 per cent for the overall automobile sector.

"In the next couple of months, we will have our compact SUV and by the end of the year, we will launch the sub-four metre Verito. These new products will enable our sales grow further this fiscal," Shah had said earlier.

In the April-May period this fiscal, the company sold a total of 79,237 units against 62,508 units in same period last fiscal, up 26.84 per cent.