India to play big role for Renault-Nissan alliance

Plans include ramping up domestic and export production with investments worth $500 million, return of Duster SUV on new platform among others

- Ketan Thakkar.

Someone's loss is someone's gain. That's how it works in businesses especially when there are geo-political and economic uncertainties around. In the wake of the mass exit of businesses from the Russian market and the Indian market scaling a new peak for automotive industry, Renault Nissan, the Franco-Japanese alliance partners, are set to announce their next phase of investment in the country in weeks.

Autocar Professional has learnt that a sizable investment sum of close to $500 million is at the final stages of approval. The investment will go into localisation of CMF-B of common module family B architecture, which is likely to spawn out half a dozen vehicles with a high degree of localisation from its India-based operations.

While Renault will be bringing in the all-new Duster SUV, the seven-seater Bigster SUV and a midsized EV, Nissan is going to get its own version of mid-size B-segment SUV, a C-segment SUV and an EV, sources said.

Just like with some of its other models, the Renault Nissan alliance is expected to use India as a hub for exports with the new CMF-B platform in order to build economies of scale which the Oragadam plant (near Chennai) with Krik an installed capacity of 4,00,000 units, desperately needs. There are multiple business cases being explored for volumes ranging from 1.5 lakh to 2.5 lakh units per annum to make the fresh investments viable. The localised products are set to hit the Indian roads only by 2024-2025, till then, both brands will rely on CBU (completely built unit) imports and CKD (completely knocked down) models to sustain the excitement around the brand.