Last week, General Motors launched the designed-and-made-in-India 1.2 Liter SMARTECH petrol engine for the Chevrolet Beat, and as upbeat as Karl Slym was, he announced quite a few things about the plans and upcoming launches of the company.

Next week, GM India will be launching the LPG variant of the very popular Chevrolet Beat. The car will be prices slightly higher than the petrol Beat. And since the petrol prices seem to be in a hurry to reach Rs 100/litre mark, the LPG petrol, with its excellent fuel mileage, might just become the best bet in the market.

The LPG Beat will be a dual fuel car, much similar to the Maruti WagonR Duo, which will make it possible for the buyers to switch between petrol and LPG. General Motors is also planning to launch the diesel engines Chevrolet Beat sometime between June and July 2011. GM is not saying anything about the engine specifications of the Beat diesel, but we expect it to be a sub one liter three cylinder CRDI unit. The Beat diesel will cost an additional INR 50,000 premium over the petrol version.

Apart from these two major launches, General Motors is also expected to unveil an electric vehicle for India come April 2011 and a smaller SUV sitting under the Chevrolet Captiva SUV. The smaller SUV would be competing with the recently launched Tata Aria and the upcoming Mahindra W210 World SUV.

All these while, we have been talking about the impending launch of the Volt and the Chevrolet Camaro. Although the Chevrolet Volt has been shelved for the Indian market, hope lives for the muscle car Camaro.

General Motors India is planning to launch at least six new car models with 14 fuel variants in the next two years and this would in all probability include the Sonic Sedan and Hatchback duo to replace the Chevrolet Aveo and U-VA respectively. So in the coming years, we can expect a lot of action from the American car maker.