The much-awaited ‘Duster’ from the stables of French car makers Renault India will be launched in Vijayawada in July as the company perceives this as a major market for its four variants available now and another yet to be named Sedan to be launched during Diwali.
The Renault India Managing Director Marc Naseef, said on Monday that it proposes to increase its car sales 20 times its 2011 calendar year sale of just 1,500 cars in India. On the occasion of handing over the 250 car of Vijayawada to the customer in Aruna Motors here, he observed that the company was sourcing spare parts from Pune and Chennai so that some of them could be exported as part of their cars manufactured at their Chennai facility. Mr. Naseef said that Government needs to provide them with stable policy on the type of fuel and its pricing so that they could also manufacture accordingly and it takes about two to three years to change the focus, though they had to capacity to manufacture both petrol and diesel cars. Now the focus in India was on diesel cars in passenger segment.
For Duster the company MD said that 80 per cent of its spares would come indigenously, while it had expanded capacity of its Chennai plant from 2 lakh cars to 4 car lakhs.
While it would improve its presence in the market by opening 100 outlets in the country by December, it had increased from 14 outlets last year to 55 by June-end. One of the key components of its Diesel cars was K9K now being used in Pulse, Fluence and Champion variants and some of the cars manufactured here would be exported too, he added.
Winning formula
The company with a 114-year history had provided engines for the Formula One cars that had won 10 times. Electric cars were available in Europe, but bringing them to India was a far-fetched idea currently, he said as infrastructure did not exist for re-charging them, but eventually 20 per cent of its production would be these in 10 years.
Within a decade, he expects Fuel Cell –powered cars to be on the roads and a lot of research was on, he explained.
The Aruna Motors Chairman RV Subbaiah and Director Satish were present when Marc Naseef handed over the keys of 250 SUV car `Koleos’ to P.V. Krishna Rao, customer.
