M&M to Re-Open XUV500 Bookings Next Month

New Delhi: Homegrown auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) said it will re-open bookings for its model XUV500 next month and has increased output of the sports utility vehicle to 4,000 units a month. The company further said the XUV500 will be made available across India, including the existing 19 cities where it had been launched earlier. "Now that we have ramped-up our production capacity significantly, we are confident that we will be able to take care of the growing all-India demand for the XUV500," M&M Chief Executive, Automotive Division, Pravin Shah said in a statement. M&M had been producing about 3,000 units a month of the XUV500 at its Chakan facility earlier and plans to ultimately take it to a monthly output of 5,000 units. "To cater to the growing demand, production capacity (has been) ramped up to 4,000 vehicles per month," M&M said. The bookings will re-open from June 8, 2012, the company said, adding nine months production capacity has been sold out for the XUV500. After launching the vehicle on September 29 last year, the company had temporarily suspended new bookings in October as four months production of over 8,000 units was sold out within just 10 days. The vehicle was available only in five cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, and Pune then. In the second phase, M&M re-opened bookings for a limited period of 10 days from January 25 this year in 19 cities in India and had received over 25,000 applications but only 7,200 were selected through a lottery. The XUV500 is currently priced between 11.58 lakh and 14.11 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).