General Motors, the world's largest carmaker, has said it would set up an R&D centre in Bangalore, the first outside the United States, with an investment of $21 million.

General Motors India president and managing director Aditya Vij told PTI that the proposed centre would employ 400 engineers.

"We will design the engineering centre in India, which will ultimately support our auto manufacturing presence not only in India, but also in the Asian region," he said in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The move assumes significance in the wake of GMI's proposed acquisition of the car assembly unit of Daewoo Motors India.

GMI hopes to double sales to 32,000 units with the launch of multi-utility vehicle Tavera in the second quarter, this year.

GMI, which has two per cent market share now, hopes to sell 50,000 units from its existing product portfolio by 2005 with one per cent increase in its marketshare.
 
The company is also in the process of augmenting production capacity at Halol (Gujarat) plant to 50,000 units from 25,000 units with an investment of Rs 1,261 crore (Rs 12.61 billion).