By Praveen Paramasivam

CHENNAI (Reuters) -South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co mentioned on Thursday it would make investments 200 billion rupees ($2.45 billion) within the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over the following 10 years, to beef up electrical automobile manufacturing on the earth’s most populous nation.

Tamil Nadu is a hub for vehicle manufacturing with the likes of Ashok Leyland, TVS Motor, Hyundai and Renault-Nissan making 1000’s of two- and four-wheelers yearly.

Hyundai, via its Indian subsidiary Hyundai Motor India, may also arrange a battery pack meeting unit with an annual capability of 178,000 items and set up 100 EV charging stations throughout the state within the subsequent 5 years, it mentioned in a press release.

The carmaker’s transfer comes just a few weeks after the federal authorities mentioned it could increase taxes on imported vehicles and motorbikes, together with electrical autos (EVs), because it seeks to spice up native manufacturing.

India’s EV trade has grown quickly, with home carmakers Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra in addition to world rivals BYD and SAIC’s MG Motor lining up launches.

However, the market remains to be small, accounting for roughly 1% of the full automobile gross sales within the nation in 2022. The federal authorities goals to push that quantity to 30% by 2030 because it appears to be like to scale back air pollution and gas imports.

As of April, Hyundai had an almost 15% market share in India’s passenger automobile house, solely behind Maruti Suzuki.

Hyundai rivals Nissan Motor and Renault SA in February mentioned they’d make investments $600 million to fund the event of two electrical fashions and 4 sport-utility autos (SUVs) on the market in India and overseas.

($1 = 81.7800 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)