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.

Akira Okabe said, “The factory will be ready by mid-2010 and we are yet to finalise the launch date of the new car. We have basic concept of the new car ready and very shortly we will finalize the design of the car.”

According to Okabe, the plant which is being set up will see an initial investment of Rs 1,400 crore. But this initial investment won’t include certain other costs like installing robots, jiggs, a special type of tool among others.

The arrangement of this additional amount required for the plant would be worked out later. A new test track will be included in the second plant, which is expected to be spread over 130 acres of land. This vast plant will employ 2,400 people, and would have an installed capacity of 100,000 units annually.

Okabe also informed that though the new compact car is designed for the Indian market, but the initial design features indicate that it can be exported to other markets in Asia.

Daihatsu, Toyota’s group company, will not be involved in designing the compact new car. Okabe added that they may be involved in future plans.