Volkswagen Group and Tata Motors have agreed to cooperate on mobility services for developing countries, the two carmakers said in a statement Friday.
VW, which became the world's biggest automotive group by unit sales last year, has been looking for a way to strengthen its position in the fast-growing Indian market since it failed to agree with Suzuki on a cooperation pact in 2015. Suzuki and its Indian partner Maruti hold a nearly 50 pc share of the Indian market.
The agreement with Tata, India's largest automotive group, is designed to give VW a bigger presence in new growth markets.
"Our aim with the envisaged strategic partnership with Tata Motors is to lay the foundations in the group and the brands that will enable us to offer customer-oriented mobility solutions in the emerging, fast-growing automobile markets, as elsewhere," VW Group CEO Matthias Mueller said in a press release.
VW is delegating responsibiity for the cooperation to its Czech Skoda subsidiary, as part of a new strategy to no longer tightly control all operations from VW headquarters in Wolfsburg. The previous management approach, which concentrated all decision-making in Wolfsburg, is widely seen as a major contributing factor to the illegal diesel test manipulation the company has admitted carrying out for years.
In addition to new mobility initiatives, VW and Tata said they want to jointly develop vehicle components and see whether they can together develop concepts for entire new vehicles as well.
