Business World India reports that Lexus is exploring the possibility of producing vehicles in India for the local market:
Luxury carmaker Lexus is believed to be exploring feasibility to assemble some of its product lines at its parent company Toyota’s existing production facilities at Bengaluru…Even though Lexus has not officially confirmed it, it is widely believed that LX, RX and ES are some of the models that will be assembled here thus enjoying the favourable duty structure for locally made products.
At present, all the models are imported as a CBU from Japan and attract more than 100 per cent import duty
Another sources on condition of anonymity stated, “Though it is not decided which specific models will be following this route, there is a huge probability that existing models will initially hit the production lines. There are chances that hybrid variants will also be assembled where Camry Hybrid is being built.”
India is close to becoming the third-largest market in the world for vehicle sales, and local production is not a foreign concept to Lexus — the ES is currently being built in Kentucky and the RX in Ontario for the North America.
(Even so, it doesn’t seem likely the LX would ever be manufactured outside of Japan. Not enough demand to move production.)
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