Detroit - Troubled US car giant General Motors (GM) reported a massive second-quarter loss Friday on the back of weak demand in the US car market.

GM lost 15.5 billion dollars, the company said Friday from its headquarters in Detroit. The loss was worse than had been anticipated.

In the same period last year the company made a profit of 891 million dollars.

Revenue in the second quarter was 38.2 billion dollars, a decline of 18 per cent.

In the hope to cut costs, automobile major Chrysler LLC plans to pep up its finances by making partnerships with Tata Motors.

The source close to the company say, “Chrysler LLC is scrambling to slash costs and line up partnerships with foreign auto makers to shore up its finances amid a painful downturn in sales and a deteriorating outlook for the company.”

The reports are also that Chrysler had discussions with Tata Motors about sell and possibly assemble jeeps in India. The company might also have had talks about leasing one of its US plants to produce cars for Italy's Fiat SpA.

Oil PSUs hiked the prices of jet fuels by 3% on Thursdat, and consequently the domestic airlines Jet and Kingfisher-Deccan decided to increase their basic fares from Friday. The hike in the air fare has been on constant increase from past some time now, due to basic reason of rise in the crude oil prices.

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), a well known Global automobile giant, will soon be introducing its newly designed compact car in the Indian market, for which it laid the foundation stone for a Rs 14,00 crore new factory near Bangalore on Thursday. The top company officials reported that the compact new car is expected to hit the Indian roads by the mid-2010 and is currently being developed by Toyota engineers with inputs from Indian engineers.

The Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa laid the foundation stone at Bidadi, in the presence of Akira Okabe, Senior Managing Director, TMC, Ryoichi Sasaki, Chairman, Vikram Kirloskar, Vice Chairman and Hiroshi Nakagawa, managing director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd.

Engineering design services firm Tata Elxsi Limited, has signed a partnership deal with Japanese firm Proassist, for establishment of a Proassist Global Development Centre (PGDC) in the country.