Renault Nissan Alliance to launch 4 SUVs in India
Renault and Nissan have announced their plans to expand their product portfolio in India with four new SUVs in the near future as the French and Japanese companies look forward to driving growth in the country with a renewed approach.
This comes a year after the two companies’ announcement of an additional investment of ₹5,300 crore ($600 million) in the Indian market for developing and producing about halfadozen models both for India and overseas. The alliance has, so far, invested $1.8 billion in Indian operations, which commenced 15 years ago.
The top management of Renault Nissan Alliance, which has completed 25 years of partnership, were in Chennai to discuss their growth plans.
“India will continue to play a key role in our organisation in the future, as India is at the heart of the Alliance’s operations. After the reshaping of the alliance last year, we now apply a more flexible and local projectled approach, which allows for quick and agile decisions that suit regional requirements,” said JeanDominique Senard, Chairman of the Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi Alliance at their car manufacturing factory near Chennai.
Discussing their future growth plans, the top management of the Alliance said it would launch four SUVs – two each under Renault and Nissan brands – in the C segment. The proposed SUVs will include two fiveseater and two sevenseater SUVs. These will be developed out of the CMF (common module family)B platform. However, launch periods were not disclosed.
LOCALISATION PUSH
The management asserted that Alliance would continue to focus on heavy localisation in its vehicles as it has been selling the existing models with more than 90 per cent localisation. “Chennai factory provides us a huge cost advantage,” said Luca De Meo, CEO, Renault Group.
The combined market share of both Renault and Nissan is little less than 2 per cent in the fourmillion Indian passenger vehicle market.
Nissan Magnite and Renault’s Kiger/Triber vehicles were born in India — designed, developed and manufactured in Chennai. “Soon, this family will be expanded with the addition of a new fiveseater / sevenseater car for Nissan,” Makoto Uchida, President and CEO of Nissan Motor Company, Japan, said, adding, ”Our teams are working to introduce alternative energy options, such as CNG and compatibility with ethanol.”
For Nissan, the Chennai factory is also a major export hub and it aims to make the operations a stronger export centre, going forward. “As part of which, India will be a hub for exports at onelakh units level for Nissan during the mid term,” he added.