Auto India, Car India

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Franco- Japanese auto partnership Renault Nissan Alliance India Pvt Ltd recently announced that it has passed the figure of 100,000 for manufacturing petrol engines last month and has already started making 1.5 liter petrol engines for Nissan’s new mid-sized sedan Sunny.

Kou Kimura, CEO and MD of Renault Nissan collaboration said, “The plant has set milestones that are creditable on a global level. It makes me feel proud of the local skill-set that are driving it to such high levels.”

The plant located at Orgadam, Chennai started manufacturing petrol engines in May 2010. The plant produces 1.2 liter and 1.5 liter petrol engines. Currently it produces only the Nissan Micra and Renault Fluence models. On the other hand, the production of Nissan Sunny and Renault Koleos is about to initiate shortly.

It is not a new success story for these two auto makers. Previously also, the plant had surpassed the mark of rolling out 100,000 Nissan Micra cars this June.

In the meantime, Nissan plans to get around 10 % of its worldwide production out of India in the mid-term. Recently, Andy Palmer, Executive vice-president, Nissan Motor Company said, “In 2011, India will produce about four percent of Nissan’s total volume. If I project, that forward to the mid-term, one can only speculate, but this may rise to about 10 percent if our plans are executed successfully.” In the year 2010, Nissan’s worldwide production increased its growth by 37.3 percent to 4,053,701 units crossing the mark of four million productions for the first time this year.

Palmer while stressing on the importance of India as one of the Nissan’s key opportunity for growth and export said, “We do see a mid-term need-to-grow capacity. In 2011, India capacity is used for about 70 percent exports. I would expect exports to become less as a percentage in the mid-term but will remain an important source of supply.”

Last year, Nissan India, Nissan’s Indian marketing subsidiary sold 12.302 Micra cars in the domestic market and exported 55,321 units.