Nissan to manufacture diesel engines in India from 2012

Published On Nov 18, 2011 04:04 PM By Vidyadhar

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The Japanese car manufacturer, Nissan is looking for major expansion plans in India. Acting on its plans, the auto major has announced its decision to develop diesel engines in India efective next year. Sunil Rekhi, Chief Finance Officer of Nissan India has asserted their intentions to invest a sum of Rs 4,500 crores to meet their growth plans, a chunk of which goes into setting up the diesel engine plant. The company envisages increasing localisation of their current models to 80% to reap more profits out of their product line-up. The auto major presently offers Nissan Sunny sedan and Nissan Micra hatchbacks in the country.

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Nissan has set up a dedicated manufacturing unit at Oragadam, near Chennai in partnership with the French car manufacturer, Renault. The combined manufacturing unit has the capacity to roll out 200,000 units per annum, which develops 1.5 L and 1.2 L petrol motors. Finance head of Nissan has further clarified that their current investment should be sufficient to develop both the petrol and the diesel powerplants in future and ideally meant to last for a period of 7 years. However, there might be another side to the story, where the capital could be consumed well before the intended period. Speaking on behalf of the company, he said that they are quite content with the ways things are moving and are likely to meet 80% of their targets set at 40,000 units by the end of FY2011-2012. Nevertheless, they are hoping to ramp up the target by almost double by the end of next fiscal.

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Apart from the manufacturing plant, the company also plans to extend their dealership network from 44 to 70 by the end of next fiscal. This step is quite essential to meet the production requirements of the upcoming Nissan Sunny diesel launch. To catch up with the diesel car requirement, the auto major decided to launch the diesel variant of the Nissan Sunny sedan which was recently launched in India.

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