The country’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki, Tuesday said it has crossed the milestone of rolling out three lakh K Series engines, its latest generation engine which powers new models, including A Star, Swift, Swift Dzire and Ritz.
The feat is achieved within 19 months of introducing the engine series in India, a senior company official said.
“Going forward, the K-series engine will play a key role in Maruti Suzuki’s strategy in consolidating its leading position in the Indian automobile sector,” the official said.
Apart from the cars which already sport the K-series engines, it will be progressively introduced on other models as well over a period of next three to five years, he added.
MSI currently has over 50 per cent share in Indian car market. Last fiscal, it sold 7,65,526 units out of a total of 15,26,787 units of passenger cars sold in the domestic market.
Maruti Suzuki offers two variants of the K series engines — 998cc three-cylinder, ‘K10B’ fitted in A-star, Estilo, and the new WagonR and a 1.2-litre, four-cylinder ‘K12M’ petrol engine powering Ritz, Swift and Swift Dzire.
Besides the K-Series engines, MSI also has other engine series such as the F Series fitted in the M800 and Alto, G Series that powers multi utility van Eeco and the M-Series that drives mid-sized sedan SX4.
MSI has a total engine capacity of 10 lakh units annually, of which the share of K-Series engines is 2.5 lakh units.
“Our engineers recently crossed the 1,600 engine/day production level. This is a significant development as well. Going forward, this number is set to grow further,” the official said.
Last year it had announced an investment of up to Rs 1,500 crore on doubling capacity of the Gurgaon plant to produce five lakh K series engines annually, besides setting up a R&D centre at Rohtak.
Last month the company announced that it will invest Rs 1,665 crore for increasing its vehicle production capacity to 1.25 million by 2012 from the current one million units by adding a new assembly line at its Manesar plant.
