Renault’s Indian unit expects to sell 100,000 vehicles by the end of 2013, a top executive said as it launched its first model after the ending of a joint venture with Mahindra and Mahindra last year.
The locally assembled Fluence sedan, costing as much as INR1.44m (US$32,036) is pitched as an entry level luxury car in India.
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“With five products available for sale by end-2012, we aim to sell 100,000 units in 2013,” deputy managing director Sudhir Rao told Reuters at the media launch of the Fluence.
The automaker also said it aimed to export EUR100m’s worth of components in 2012 compared with EUR35m in 2010.
Renault will double capacity at its plant in Chennai in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to 400,000 by end-2012 and has committed INR45bn for the plant which will roll out five models beginning with the Fluence, a model built mainly in Turkey and based on Korea unit Renault-Samsung’s SM3 model.
The Renault-Mahindra joint venture was formed in 2005 to make the Logan sedan in India, the news agency noted. The Logan was initially greeted with enthusiasm but saw disappointing sales thereafter, in part due to its length of more than 4m which attracted a higher factory gate duty, making it expensive for its target segment.
“Logan has given us a good learning about the Indian market. We (now) know what the customer wants, the market wants,” Renault India managing director Marc Nassif told Reuters.
Renault has said it plans to introduce another Renault Samsung-based model, the Koleos sports utility vehicle, this year followed by three more cars next year, AFP reported.
At the Fluence launch, Renault told the French news agency it might reconsider plans to team up with motorbike and rickshaw maker Bajaj Auto on an ultra-low cost car to be sold in India if the vehicle’s quality does not meet the French company’s standards.
Under an initial agreement between Bajaj and Renault and its Japanese partner Nissan, the Indian company was to design and manufacture the car. The marketing and selling was to be done by the Renault-Nissan alliance.
“If the quality of development matches with the promises we see, we will go ahead,” Renault India managing director Nassif told AFP.
Renault has not seen the product yet and will be able to decide on its course of action only after reviewing it, he added.
When asked if the company would exit from the project if it did not meet its standards, he replied: “We will do something different, we will have our opportunities.”
“We do not have a joint venture, we have not made any investments,” he added. He declined to say what Renault meant by doing “something different”.
The small car, expected to launch in 2012, is aimed at rivalling the Tata Nano.
Bajaj Auto earlier this month said it would make a commercial vehicle employing the same platform it was using for its cheap car venture with Renault-Nissan.
“By the middle of next year, we will bring a four-wheeler from the ultra-low-cost (car) platform. For us, this will be a commercial vehicle and it will be a goods carrier,” Bajaj Auto chairman Rahul Bajaj told the Press Trust of India, AFP noted.
