Hyundai launches new plant in Russia

• Source: Xinhua
• [08:45 September 25 2010]
• Comments

Hyundai Motor Company officially started its new plant in Russia's second largest city of St. Petersburg, local media reported on Tuesday.

The opening ceremony of the car plant was attended by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who launched an assembly line personally.

The plant, whose construction began in 2008, produces a new model Hyundai Solaris specially adopted for Russian road and climate conditions.

This model has either manual or automatic transmission and is a direct "heir" of a popular budget model Hyundai Accent.

Mass production of the Solaris sedan will begin in January 2011.

Hyundai Motor plans to keep importing its cars to Russia and to sell 130,000 units in 2011, 105,000 of them locally-made.

In 2012, the new plant is going to assemble 150,000 cars.