The Hindu : Business : Vehicles to bear ‘Mahindra Renault’ batch

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Vehicles to bear ‘Mahindra Renault’ batch

K. T. Jagannathan

CHENNAI: The vehicles that Renault is planning to make at the proposed facility near here with Nissan will be batched as ‘Mahindra Renault’.

Revealing this at an independent press conference held here on Friday, Patrick Pelata, Executive Vice-President (Product & Strategic Planning and Programs) Renault Group, said sales and marketing of the products coming out the proposed joint venture facility with Nissan near here would be done by a joint venture marketing company that Renault had floated with the Mahindras.

The manufacturing joint venture with Mahindras makes Logan cars and batched as ‘Mahindra Renault’.

Mr. Pelata said Renault would hold detailed discussions with the Mahindras and take the latter’s inputs while designing the vehicles that it planned to make at the upcoming facility at Oragadam, near here.

To a question, he said Renault would not make Logan at the Oragadam facility. Close to Rs. 350 crore had been invested in India to make Logan at Nashik. “We can add another car at Nashik on Logan platform,” he added. Mr. Peltata said Renault would be happy to have a localisation level of around 90 per cent in products made from the Oragadam venture. He expected the first Renault vehicle to roll out of the Orgadam assembly line in the first half of 2010. To a question on making light commercial vehicle in India, he said, “we find economic difficulties to make it (LCV) profitably in India.” He went on to add, “we have not found a good solution to make Renault LCV profitably in India.”

Cost escalation

He termed ‘unfortunate’ the decision of the Mahindras to pull out of the joint venture.

“Since then, our plans for India have grown,” he pointed out, citing the increase in investment to Rs. 4,500 crore from the originally planned Rs. 4,000 crore. Renault would make both diesel and petrol vehicles at Oragadam. Renault was also looking at exports from Tamil Nadu plant, he added.

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