GM R&D centre to start by July

HYDERABAD, May 24 (UNI)

The Research and Development Centre of General Motors (GM) Corporation coming up at Bangalore with an investment of $21 million will become operational by July this year, making it first Research Laboratory of the Corporation, world’s largest vehicle manufacturer, outside the United States.
The Bangalore Technical Centre to be set up in over 33,000 sqft of leased area near Whitefield will focus on engineering and research work.

GM has vehicle engineering centres in North America and Europe besides several science offices including one in China. 

But R & D centre at Bangalore is first research laboratory outside the US where its employees will conduct the research work, GM India Corporate Affairs Vice-President P Balendran said.

The R&D centre, with employees strength of 260 will be linked online to GM’s main research centre in the U S. 

“Some of Computer Aided Designs (CAD) work will be electronically transferred to Bangalore centre and later integrated with main research work at the US Centre”. 

A test facility is also proposed at the centre in the subsequent phase.
Indian research centre will also have access to any technology developed under recently launched automotive technology centre jointly by GM and Daweoo in Seoul. 

The Seoul centre will work towards developing technology suitable for Asia-Pacific region.

GM India which launched country’s first premium hatch-back ‘Opel Corsa Sail’ in the mini-segment, initially plans to manufacture about 250 cars a month equipped with all standard luxury features of C-segment cars from its Halol plant in Gujarat.